Characters / Breaking Bad: Los Pollos Hermanos

Main Character Index | Better Call Saul
Walt's Family (Walter White), Heisenberg's Empire (Saul Goodman), DEA and Police, Juarez Cartel, Los Pollos Hermanos, Madrigal Electromotive, Aryan Brotherhood, Other Criminals, Other Civilians

"In the little village where I was born, life moved at a slower pace, yet felt all the richer for it. There my two uncles were known far and wide for their delicious cooking. They seasoned their zesty chicken using only the freshest herbs and spices. People called them "los pollos hermanos" ("the chicken brothers"). Today, we carry on their tradition in a way that would make my uncles proud. The finest ingredients are brought together with love and care, then slow-cooked to perfection. Yes, the old ways are still best at Los Pollos Hermanos. But don't take my word for it. One taste, and you'll know..."

—Los Pollos Hermanos advertisement

A wildly popular restaurant chain managed by Gus Fring. It primarily serves as a front for his drug trafficking operation. Lydia can be seen here; its depiction in Better Call Saul can be seen here.

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In general

In general

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• Covert Group with Mundane Front: Nobody suspects that a beloved local restaurant could be a front for America's largest meth operation. Gus goes out of his way to build a respected brand for Los Pollos Hermanos by cultivating a friendly relationship with the law and making charitable contributions, and is very discrete when doing his illegal business in the actual restaurant itself. Hank is initially written off as crazy for suspecting Gus, and the full truth about Los Pollos Hermanos is not exposed until after Gus' death.
• Expy: It shares similarities with Pollo Campero, a Latin American chicken chain that later expanded to the US. Its strong emphasis on food quality and customer service also bring to mind Chick-fil-A.
• The Syndicate: A highly sophisticated drug trafficking operation with an air-tight cover business. While they are initially under the thumb of The Cartel, Gus eventually knocks them out.
• Uncertain Doom: After Gus' death, the flagship location in Albuquerque becomes a Twisters, but no mention is made of what happens to their other locations across the Southwest.

Core

Leadership

Gustavo Fring

Gustavo "Gus" Fring

Portrayed By: Giancarlo Esposito

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul

"I hide in plain sight. Same as you."

^{As he appeared in 1989} "<I merely took the initiative. I meant no insult.>"

"When you are at Los Pollos Hermanos, you are under my protection."

An enigmatic Chilean-American entrepreneur. Gus is the proprietor of Los Pollos Hermanos, a highly successful fried chicken restaurant chain. Gus is also a public booster for the DEA office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as well as a member of the hospital board. Despite outward appearances, Gus is a major drug kingpin who uses his restaurants as a front for methamphetamine distribution throughout the American southwest.

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• The Ace: Gus is a successful businessman, respectable worker, crafty planner, and a stern and commendable leader all wrapped into a figure who has been a leading figurehead in New Mexico's drug and cartel industry. He's also very socially controlled and flexible, being very receptive and perceptive of others' thoughts, showing him to be very good in social interactions when the situation calls for it, which furthers just how good of a leader he is. These, combined with his cold pragmatism, and effective management of his employees both in his legal and illegal activities make Gus among the most formidable and talented characters in the franchise.
• Affably Evil: Gus is a polite and reasonable man, even behind his public mask. His politeness isn't an act (at least not at first), either; he genuinely believes in running his meth empire as professionally as any other company and shows some disdain for the blood-soaked gangland-style Stupid Evil management of the South of the Border Cartel and Salamancas. If you respect him and abide by the rules, he'll be fair to you. But if you cross him, he will absolutely destroy everything you are.
• Affluent Ascetic: He's, at the bare minimum, a multi-millionaire, but you'd never know it by looking at the way he lives.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Gus' death is cast in a somber light due to how tragic it is that he never got his final revenge on Hector, the man who killed his partner (and possible lover), and the calmly melancholic music that plays as Gus walks to his death.
• Almighty Janitor: Even disregarding his status as a drug lord, he's the owner of Los Pollos Hermanos and still finds time to do some menial work around the place.
• Ambiguously Bi: There was something between him and his late partner Maximino, confirmed by the creators themselves on the Ringer Podcast. However, when he makes dinner for Walter and Jesse, it appears that he has an unseen family: a wife and children, presumably. Whether they exist at all is another matter, and if they do exist, it's unclear whether he actually loved the hypothetical wife or if she was just The Beard.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Whether or not he did in fact order the execution of 11-year-old Tomás Cantillo after Jesse was willing to kill the two adults using him to deal meth is never revealed. On the one hand, his dialogue with Walt in the desert implies he only heard about it rather than ordered it, and he seems truly offended when Walt suggests he might have done so. On the other hand, he does threaten to kill infant Holly later on, so his innocence is definitely in question.
  • What is his familial situation? Are the kids that he mentions real? Is he married? When Jesse and Walt visit his house, there are toys laying around. Gus mentions that his kids are picky eaters and out of town but they’re never shown or mentioned again. This could be interpreted as him making something up to manipulate Walt because in context he’s talking about how men are supposed to provide for their families. As for the married part, he never mentions a spouse. It’s heavily implied and eventually confirmed that he and Max were more than friends and he’s still never gotten over his death 20 years later so it would seem a bit odd of for him to have married someone else, let alone a woman. If you believe he’s gay and not bisexual, it’s also not hard to imagine someone as meticulous and obsessed about keeping up the legitimate businessman front as he is would marry a woman and have kids for appearances.
• Ambiguous Start of Darkness: While we know the event that turned him against the Cartel - that being the murder of Max - it's all but confirmed that he was already a well-known criminal before that. Hector and Eladio imply that Gus was somehow involved in Pinochet's regime in Chile (and that this association makes Eladio spare his life), and Lalo references some event in Santiago that proves to Bolsa that he shouldn't be underestimated (an event that, by Gus's own description, almost cost him his life until Peter Schuler saved him). Gilligan and Gould mentioned that they thought about including some more overt references to his actions with Pinochet, but they chose to keep it ambiguous.
• Animal Motifs: Chickens, obviously. He owns and operates a successful chicken restaurant, and is usually referred to by the Salamancas as “the chicken man” (or “el pollero” in Spanish). After being bombed, he manages to walk out of the room with half his face blown off before dying, similar to the legend of chickens running around after having their heads cut off.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The Juarez Cartel, but specifically Hector Salamanca is this to Gustavo. Having been responsible for the murder of his close partner Max, Gustavo has wanted nothing but to extract his vengeance against Hector and his family, which he does over the course of many years. In turn, Hector comes to hate Gustavo as well for stealing his business, ensuring that he becomes permanently disabled and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and ultimately causing the death of his entire family, all while he's unable to do anything about it. It's no wonder that Hector is willing to form an Enemy Mine with Heisenberg to finally destroy Gustavo once and for all.
  • Over time, Walter came to view Gustavo as his greatest enemy, due to having pretty much everything he wants and because of the threat he presents to Walter's family and Jesse Pinkman. This is entirely one-sided, however, as Gustavo never held Walter in any regard other than being a great pest. In fact, Gus thinks so little of Walter that he never suspected that it could ultimately be his undoing.
• Asshole Victim: He had it coming after he tried to kill Hank and threatened to kill Walt’s family if Walt interfered. The overall tense atmosphere the narrative has had since Crawl Space makes his demise relieving. His actions on Better Call Saul further amplify this, most prominently being when we see what he did to Nacho, culminating in Nacho calling him an asshole in his final moments.
• Ax-Crazy: Normally averted as Gus tends to be dismissive of excessively violent acts, but when he has to kill, he makes sure to give his victims a particularly cruel, drawn-out, and painful death, as shown with Arturo and Victor. The tale about him torturing a coati instead of letting it die also hints at Gus having a more violent side since his childhood.
• Badass Boast: After murdering the entire Juarez Cartel, he says this:
  Gus: Don Eladio is dead. His capos are dead. You have no one left to fight for. Fill your pockets and leave in peace, or fight me and die!
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He's always sharply dressed and takes care to make himself presentable. He's a fearless badass in the face of danger from Hector Salamanca and even personally shoots Lalo Salamanca.
• Badass Longcoat: Gus will occasionally don a black peacoat that reaches his mid-thigh, such as when he calls a Cartel Sniper's bluff by walking straight out into the open, complete with his hands up.
• Bad Boss:
  • He is this when people under his employ make great mistakes, or if he is just in a really bad mood. His version of firing someone is killing them (and their loved ones if they're somehow a liability), and if he does the killing himself, it's drawn out to be as painful as possible.
  • From 2003, he was this exclusively to Nacho, constantly controlling him through fear and intimidation when he makes it a point to never resort to such means other than as a last resort. When Mike brings this up, Gus points out that Nacho has betrayed every single boss he's had, so he needs the stick instead of the carrot. In truth, however, it's all but stated Gus treated Nacho poorly out of pettiness that he came close to killing Hector. This ends up being deconstructed when Gus refuses to listen to Mike's warnings about this, and it ends up leading to Nacho being stranded in Mexico with no incentive to keep his mouth shut about Gus's activities once the Cartel catches up with him. The only reason Gus is able to get out of this situation is because Nacho agrees to work with him in exchange for his father's safety.
  • While he usually treats his Los Pollos Hermanos employees with great respect and gracefulness, the night where Gustavo is forced to relinquish $700,000 dollars as part of a Morton's Fork situation upsets him so much that he actively belittles and acts passive-aggressive towards Lyle, forcing the poor guy to clean an air fryer for several minutes despite it being spotless already.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He's the one who ultimately takes out both Don Eladio and Lalo Salamanca, along with launching the operations that cripple the Cartel's influence in New Mexico in general.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: He tells a story to an unconscious Hector about how growing up poor, he snared a coati that was eating the fruit from a tree he cultivated, and despite it having a broken leg that would have made killing it more merciful, kept it alive to draw out its suffering.
• Bad Liar: He puts up a very elaborate smokescreen to explain Werner's death to Lalo, namely that Werner stole cocaine from him, and his crew was definitely NOT working on a secret basement but on a new blast chiller for his warehouse. Lalo doesn't buy it for a second but finds it hilarious.
• Bait the Dog: He first appears in Mandala to be no more than the pleasant, mild-mannered proprietor of a fried chicken franchise. This continued for the first half of Season 3. Then One Minute and I See You came along.
• Batman Gambit:
  • His ploy to have two attackers come after Jesse and Mike causes Jesse to spring into action and then start questioning his loyalty to Walt. It extends even further because Gus allows Walt to do much of the damage to their relationship himself, which he proceeds to do so through his Jerkass behavior driven by his massive ego.
  • Before that, granting Leonel and Marco permission to go after Hank instead of Walt. This played into Gus' plans perfectly: if Hank dies, the police turn up the heat on the cartel's operation, allowing Gus to corner the market; if the attack fails, Walt is safe, and two of the cartel's biggest hitters are down, and Gus can force a sitdown. When the plan goes slightly wrong because Leonel survives, Gus throws a big party for the police in the lobby, distracting them with good food and joy while Mike sneaks in to finish him off.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: Gus is generally a behind-the-scenes player and rarely gets his hands dirty himself. The only exception is against Lalo Salamanca, who backs Gus into such a corner that all he can do is cut the lights, grab a hidden gun, and fire as many times as he possibly can.
• Being Evil Sucks: As much as Gus seems to revel in being evil, it's clear from his final scene in Better Call Saul that his life's unhealthy pursuit of revenge deprives him of forming any meaningful relationships or finding genuine happiness. For a moment, he even contemplates this after seemingly finding real pleasantries with the sommelier David: to pursue a relationship with him would mean discarding his life's work of avenging Max and, therefore, his criminal life forever. He chooses revenge, and the way the scene is conveyed clearly illustrates he takes the worst path possible.
• Benevolent Boss: Gus genuinely treats his employees well, both his legitimate ones and his criminal ones. When Hector takes his restaurant hostage, he commends everyone afterward for how they conducted themselves, promises to pay for counseling if anyone asks, and even gives them a full day's worth of overtime. On the criminal side, a big part of his empire is ensuring hazard pay for his employees should he be killed and a fund dedicated entirely to Mike's granddaughter, funded through his offshore accounts; he even lets a day's batch go forsaken when Jesse has to stay in the hospital with his girlfriend's son (and the fact that Walt poisoned Brock means there's no ulterior motives). On the other hand, the moment you become a liability like Walt does, your life is 100% expendable.
• Beneath the Mask: An Exaggerated Trope. A mild restaurant owner is secretly a ruthless and two-faced drug kingpin.
• Berserk Button:
  • Denying Gus his revenge against Hector Salamanca. During Gus' confrontation with Nacho, this is one of the few times we ever see an extremely angered Gus and one who acts physically at that, he is livid at the thought of having his revenge taken away from him and makes it clear to Nacho that the only reason he is alive is that he has the perfect leverage over him.
  • A lack of loyalty or professionalism, unpredictability, or general instability are all surefire ways to get under Gus' skin; he claims to justify treating Nacho poorly because he sees that has a tendency to betray all of his bosses. He's willing to murder his own employees if they act untrustworthy or unprofessional. He's a much better boss towards Mike, whose loyalty and professionalism win him over.
• Best Served Cold: His driving motivation in life against the cartel that took Max from him.
  • Gus drags out his revenge against his Arch-Enemy Hector Salamanca across twenty years, slowly picking off all of his relatives (save for Tuco, who was solely Hank's doing) as he wastes away in a retirement home.
  • Whatever Gus was when he originally lived in Chile, it was scary enough that Don Eladio spared his life at the cartel manor. The Don instead killed his partner, then reminded Gus to restrict his business to chicken. Gus would pitch the same deal decades later, whereupon Eladio fell dead at the exact same spot where Max was shot.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's nicer and more stable than Tuco, but more lethal due to his professionalism and superior business intelligence — enough to match Walt for a time.
• Big Bad: The biggest one in Breaking Bad. He's introduced late in Season 2 and holds the position from the end of Season 3 until his death at the end of Season 4.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Don Eladio Vuente in Season 4. After the departure of Tuco, the Cousins, and Juan Bolsa, it is Don Eladio's cartel that causes problems for Gus during the season, and his tensions with Gus solidify again.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: To the public, Gus is a very respectable and compassionate entrepreneur who does much to give back to the community. In reality, he is a cruel and ruthless drug lord who has no qualms with ordering murders and callously manipulating those around him to maintain power and get revenge.
• Black and Nerdy: He's an intelligent, manipulative drug kingpin and businessman, as well as Afro-Chilean. The nerdy part is Justified by the glasses and hyper-competent business acumen.
• Blofeld Ploy: Pulls this in "Box Cutter" by slitting Victor's throat in front of Walt and Jesse with a boxcutter. Justified in that Walt has him at a standstill so that Gus can no longer kill him, and Victor had been seen at the site of Gale's murder, which could potentially lead the investigation back to Gus.
• Broken Ace: While he is a multitalented man and a respected leader and businessman, Gus is still emotionally plagued and stunted by the death of his lover, Max, and much of his ambition is based around his desire to avenge him, showing that he's never gotten over his affection.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Gus makes it a rule to always be calm, composed, and think about what to say and do ahead of time. He breaks this rule in his interactions with Hector, a mistake that directly leads to his demise.
• Character Tic: Straightening his tie, to the point that when he takes his tie off, it's an O.O.C. Is Serious Business moment.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The seemingly polite and legitimate owner of Los Pollos Hermanos is actually a drug kingpin.
• Cloudcuckoolander: A brief and dark bout of this is when Gus is forced to give up $700,000 to the DEA as a result of Lalo's machinations. He spends a night with his mind awkwardly spaced out and going back and forth into his office and his restaurant's friers. Lyle, who insists on helping out over time, even notes that Gus seems incredibly distressed.
• The Chessmaster: If he does anything, there are probably far more layers to his decision than you would originally think.
• Cold Ham: He rarely, if ever, raises his voice or loses his cool, which doesn't stop him from having a commanding presence in nearly every scene of his.
• Consummate Liar: On par with, if not surpassing, Walt himself. Gus is incredibly meticulous in protecting his double life and effortlessly spins lie upon lie to the DEA, most of whom believe every word coming out of this mild-mannered good Samaritan's mouth.
• Consummate Professional: Holds himself and his employees in the meth business to the same high standards of professionalism as he does his employees in the chicken business. Subverted at the very end when it turns out it's not all business to him, but a very long-term plan for revenge.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Tuco in Season 2; in fact, both are complete opposites. While Tuco was explosive, deranged, emotionally unstable, childish, openly sadistic, rude, blunt and unsophisticated; Gustavo was characterized for being calm, cool, collected, polite, sophisticated and professional.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: This fast food tycoon secretly moonlights as a drug kingpin, using his chain of fried chicken restaurants as a front for a massive meth trafficking operation.
• The Corrupter:
  • He takes both Gale and Jesse under his wing in order to turn them into his ideal subordinates: loyal, grateful, and beholden to no one but him.
  • He also is this with relation to Walt: before meeting Gus, Walt might have backed out once he reached his set goal without any of his future empire plans. Meeting Gus and seeing the full scope of his own meth empire accelerated Walt's fall into an irrecoverable situation, with Walt crossing several Moral Event Horizons just to stay out of Gus's radar while attempting to outsmart him.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Walt wouldn't have been able to use Hector to kill Gus if Gus had just let Hector die from his heart attack six years earlier. Nacho even points out before he kills himself that Hector was "dead and buried" before Gus chose to resuscitate him.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • He has a secret hospital set up with medical staff on his payroll to revive him when he self-poisons. Not only that, the hospital is supplied with matching blood types for himself, Jesse, and Mike (and they even know Jesse's entire medical history).
  • He made arrangements for his entire meth operation in the event of his death, including hazard pay for any employees that might be sent to prison. The only evidence that could destroy it is hidden in the interior of an encrypted computer that the police can't crack, meaning that if Walt, Jesse, and Mike hadn't tried to destroy the evidence they thought the DEA had, the police never would've tracked it all down.
• Create Your Own Villain:
  • Though Walt was by no means a pure-hearted hero beforehand, Gus' influence and Walt's exposure to his money and power hastened his transformation into a Villain Protagonist that ultimately outwits and destroys Gus.
  • This arguably goes both ways. Gus was perfectly happy to be a reasonable employer for Walt at first, but as Walt and Jessie go off increasingly half-cocked, it doesn't take long for Gus to rethink Walt's usefulness.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: While Gus doesn't involve himself in direct violence, the few times he actually does so result in his victims dying a long, yet painful, horrifying death with the intent of intimidating and scaring others into submission.
  • He kills Arturo by placing a plastic bag onto his head, tying it up, and then ziptying his hands and feet, leaving Arturo to fumble around and wriggle helplessly as he loses his breath and dies from a lack of oxygen. What makes this cruel is how this is done right in front of Nacho, who is held at gunpoint by Tyrus and Victor as he is forced to watch Arturo die, unable to help his friend out of shock by Gus's ruthlessness and cruelty.
  • Slitting Victor's throat is a grisly move by itself, but what makes it nightmarish is how Gus grips his subordinate to a proportionate angle where his blood gushes out under higher amounts of pressure. Victor tries desperately to free himself, but not only is Gus's grip stronger and is clearly drawing out Victor's last moments, but he does this all whilst giving out a haunting Death Glare to Walt, Jesse, and Mike, all as a way to how them the consequences of slighting him.
• Crusading Widower: After his lover Max was killed by the cartel, he spent the rest of his life building up a massive drug empire as well as a highly successful legitimate front fast food business, solely for the purpose of overthrowing them and avenging Max.
• Cultured Badass: Gus is one of the most intelligent and cultured characters in the series. He also gets himself Alone with the Psycho that is Lalo Salamanca, makes him drop his guard and then personally shoots him after a chaotic, intense gunfight. It also takes balls to poison himself to take down the Cartel leadership. An episode before that, he walks straight into sniper fire, daring Gaff to kill him.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: He's a successful legitimate businessman through the Los Pollos Hermanos restaurant chain, which operates at least 14 restaurants in several states across the southwest. Gus could live a perfectly comfortable life on that alone, but the only reason he built up the chain was to use it as a distribution network for his meth empire—which, in turn, he built to exact revenge on the Salamancas. Ironically, to maintain his disguise as a mild-mannered restauranteur, Gus lives a very modest lifestyle below his means.
• The Dandy: Generally very well dressed. Even when stuck in his garish yellow shirt at the restaurant, his clothing is always as neat and impeccable as always. On the rare occasion when he personally gets his hands dirty, he will even take the time to remove as much outer clothing as possible (hanging it up neatly) so as not to mess his outfits up. This even includes stopping to place a towel on the floor before he kneels at a toilet to induce vomiting, before the poison he took kills him.
• Death Glare: A master of this when he needs to be intimidating or control his weaker-willed subordinates like Gale.
• Deadpan Snarker: He is not above being this under specific circumstances, having a dry sense of humor, mostly when he's left alone with Hector.
• Decapitation Strike: His ultimate gambit against The Juarez Cartel. With their entire leadership dead, there's no one left for cartel members to fight for, and all but one of the remaining members fled.
• Devil in Plain Sight: He is a minor public figure, a well-known businessman and philanthropist who gladhands with high-ranking DEA agents, none of whom suspect a thing until Hank manages to figure him out.
• Diabolical Mastermind: A friendly, wealthy, and philanthropic businessman running the largest crystal meth empire north of the border, with hundreds of accomplices and assassins at his beck and call, all gained through sheer cunning and strategy.
• Difficult, but Awesome: His plan is to build an underground meth lab beneath a laundromat to produce his own product. Not only does it involve contacting architects from Europe (who have to be hooded when brought to Albuquerque, to keep them from knowing the location), the one hired to oversee the construction, Werner Ziegler, spells out the difficulties of building such a thing: taking into account the budget and material needed, the structure could collapse, not to say cause enough noise to attract attention. This, of course, without taking into account human resources like the rabble-rousers like Kai or the increasingly homesick Werner. However, the work moves forward per Gus' instructions since once finished, it'll allow him to produce his own product without relying on the Cartel, avoid possible detection, keep a stable space for everyone to work without any restraints, and provide him yet another money-laundering front for his crew.
• Didn't Think This Through: It's abundantly clear that he didn't take into account what to do with Nacho carefully after Lalo's hit. His plot to make the Cartel silence Nacho falls apart completely because he fails to account for the motel having an improvised backdoor and the Salamancas being disciplined enough to not kill him right away.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He more or less enslaves Nacho because he almost killed Hector before Gus could have completed his revenge. He also said he tortured a coati to death as a child because it ruined the tree he cultivated.
• The Don: A white-collar version of this trope. As the undisputed leader of a large criminal organization whose illicit businesses are money laundering and meth distribution, he's incredibly professional in keeping a low profile and presenting himself as an honest businessman and philanthropist who gladhands with high-ranking DEA agents. Basically, he's everything Heisenberg wants to be: Feared, powerful, rich, and one of the biggest drug kingpins in the region, with state-of-the-art infrastructure.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Technically, he's an employee of Peter Schuler, his partner-in-crime at Madrigal Electromotive. However, from their interactions, it's clear that Gus is the dominant personality, and Schuler has little to do with the day-to-day operation of Fring's drug empire.
• The Dreaded: He is this to many in New Mexico's drug cartel and especially to those who dare to either cross his path, threaten him, or defect him. While Gus may appear to be a nice and easygoing man publicly, his cold pragmatism, sheer ruthlessness, and not above threatening the lives of loved ones to assert dominance allow him to strike terror towards anyone who comes into contact with his meth business. Best shown when he kills Victor with a box cutter right in front of Walt and Jesse, which shakes them up considerably for the next few episodes, especially Jesse who spends the following nights partying hard to drown out what he witnessed, while Walt becomes increasingly desperate and panicky over his thoughts on killing Gus.
• Eagleland: He invokes this in his speech to his demoralized Los Pollos Hermanos employees after Hector stirs trouble to get his attention.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Those who don't respect him often refer to him as "The Chicken Man" because he runs several fried chicken fast food restaurants.
• Enemy Mine: He initially meets Mike forming an alliance out of the realization that their hatred of Hector Salamanca is mutual.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Much of his actions against the cartel are to avenge the death of his business partner and lover Max Arciniega. He also seems to be genuinely fond of Gale, though he has no qualms manipulating him in order to further his own ambitions. Gustavo's final scene in Better Call Saul has him chatting up a wine dealer who is implied to have a crush on him, and while Gustavo seems to contemplate reciprocating it, he ultimately chooses not to pursue it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Gustavo is not without standards given his ethics and ideals of professionalism.
  • He finds Hector's decision to take his restaurant hostage to be a bit excessive. Given those are his employees, this is understandable. The tone of his voice when meeting Mike, suggests even he found Hector's ruthless killing of a civilian distasteful.
  • His professionalism shows up again when he refuses to take a 'commission' from the money Mike wants to launder for this family, as his stated objection is that he will not steal from Mike's family.
  • Though Gustavo is as cautious and careful as can be when conducting/building his business, even he shows visible irritation towards Lydia Rodarte-Quayle and her overly emotional behavior when dealing with situations.
  • Invoked in "Full Measure" when he gets offended at the implication that he ordered the death of a child. Though it's later subverted as he threatens to kill Walt's entire family, including his son and his infant daughter, and shows no qualms with doing so.
• Evil Gloating: He's generally too smart and cautious to indulge in it, which makes it telling when he begins to do so late in Season 4.
• Evil Is Petty: When he is forced to sacrifice $700,000 (due to Lalo) to throw the DEA off his trail, he takes out his anger on his employee Lyle by saying that he is doing a bad job with the cleaning of the chicken fryers.
• Evil Mentor: Largely an unintentional one to Walt, who clearly envies his success and business style. The writers have admitted that, while he'd never admit it, Walt looks up to Gus and sees him as a role model for his criminal behavior.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He's got a very intimidating baritone, though he softens it whenever he's in his restaurant manager identity to make himself appear friendly and approachable.
• Evil Versus Evil: With the Cartel and more specifically the Salamanca family. He is a cold-blooded kingpin while they are hot-headed drug lords with little care about who gets hurt in their schemes.
• Evil Virtues: Stoic, professional, rational, pragmatic, hardworking, fiercely determined, generally a Benevolent Boss and genuinely Affably Evil unless you hit his Berserk Button or he's in a really bad spot at time, and unafraid to put himself into the line of fire directly or get his hands dirty, with many of his biggest victories achieved personally rather than by underlings.
• Face Death with Dignity: After a bomb literally blows half his face off, Gus walks calmly out the door, and straightens his tie, then falls over dead.
• Facial Horror: Walks away after an explosion and straightens his tie with half his face blown off right before he dies. He'd make Two-Face proud.
• Failed a Spot Check: It never quite occurs to Gus that an actual DEA snitch would never be left unattended, no matter how much he appears to be.
• Familial Foe: Gus spends decades scheming to bring about the deaths of the nephews and grandson of his rival drug lord Hector Salamanca (who killed Gus' best friend and possible lover) before killing Hector himself.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: He'll occasionally do this when speaking to employees who aren't exactly treading on thin ice yet, but still need a reminder of whom they're talking to.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Gus tends to underestimate his opponents. Although he is wary of Walter, he still only sees him as a minor annoyance, which leads to his downfall. This trait can be seen in the prequel as well, where he underestimates Lalo’s tenacity and as a result fails in having him killed quickly.
  • For all of his pragmatism, his obsession with personal revenge against Hector proves to be the death of him. It also dovetails with his other flaw — he takes such satisfaction at having physically broken his old rival that Hector's final move, using what little strength he has left, catches him off guard.
• A Father to His Men: Part of his public figure (and arguably one of the only aspects of his personality that translates both in his private and personal life). Gus insists on maintaining a healthy workplace environment and tries to keep a good relationship with his employees, offering legitimate advice and training. This serves him well as a motivating productive factor — happy workers mean better production, and there's no profit to be made in treating his employees badly. But it's also a personal ethos: when you're under his wing, you're safe. Anything less than that is unacceptable.
• Faux Affably Evil: When it becomes a personal matter Gus will try to maintain his casual tone and demeanor even as he gloats about having killed someone's entire family. He keeps a good elocution even when torturing or gruesomely killing people touched his nerves and won't use profanities when issuing threats.
• Foil: To Walt, as the framing frequently accentuates. He and Walter are similar in that they are both (ostensibly) reasonable men hiding their criminal enterprises in plain sight, but this ultimately serves to highlight the differences between them — namely, Gus being much, much better at this than Walter. See this video essay on the subject.
  • On a side note, their abilities as a leader are quite the opposite. Walter is a great tactician, but a poor strategist. Gus, on the other hand, is a great long strategist, but is somewhat lacking in his tactics on the military aspect. As shown in the prequel, Gus depends on Mike to figure out a lot of the short-term plans, due to his experiences as a soldier and cop. When Mike isn’t around to do this, Gus flounders more, and this ultimately leads to his demise.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: For a cold-blooded killer he manages to look utterly unassuming, and his glasses add to that effect:
  Lalo Salamanca: "This guy? He's a housecat. Black, medium height. Short hair. Glasses. He kinda looks like a librarian. But don't be fooled. Even a housecat can scratch."
• Former Regime Personnel: Several hints are dropped that Gus was involved in some way with the Pinochet regime back in Chile. Hector mockingly refers to him as the "generalissimo", and Eladio warns him that, despite his preceding reputation, "you are not in Chile anymore". Gilligan and Gould on the Inside the Gillverse podcast confirmed that they had a few ideas about Gus being a part of Pinochet's dictatorship at some point, but left his backstory open to interpretation.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From what he discloses, Gus grew up in what was essentially a shack on the outskirts of a remote village in South America. From there, it's implied he managed to gain a spot in Pinochet's regime, and after the Cartel kills his lover, he gradually grows into the undisputed meth kingpin of the southwestern United States and takes out the entire Cartel while he's at it.
• Frozen Face: The most striking difference between Gus the restaurant manager, and Gus the drug kingpin, is that he completely ceases showing any emotive tendencies so as to not give any psychological advantage to his enemies. When Walt first meets Gus, his transition from one persona to the other is communicated by the gradual relaxation of his day job's expressive facial features, and his voice lowering by quite a few octaves.
• Gayngster: The ambiguity of Gus' relationship with Max is enough for Hector and Lalo to make disparaging remarks about it in Better Call Saul and the Word of God confirms that their mutual affection was of the romantic nature.
• A Glass of Chianti: Better Call Saul reveals that he is very knowledgable about wine, and naturally he prefers the red stuff.
• Gut Feeling: Has very good intuition and a sense for when he's in danger, occasionally bordering on Spider-Sense territory. It even saves his life when he decides not to leave the hospital in the car he arrived in, somehow detecting that something was wrong (Walt had put a bomb on it). Unfortunately for him, it fails him at the worst possible time, resulting in his death.
• Horrifying the Horror: He texts the Salamanca Brothers with a single word, "Pollos" when they're waiting at Walter's home to ambush him. While the looks they exchange are as stone cold as ever, they immediately bail before Walter even knows they're there.
• Hidden Depths: He is incredibly sophisticated and cultured for a drug lord, a far cry from Eladio and the Salamancas. When Mike bluntly insinuates Fring is just some drug dealer, Lydia implies there is so much more to him than meets the eye.
  • He takes a lot of pride in running his restaurant franchise as genuinely as possible. While nominally this is to keep up his front as a mild-mannered store owner, he still puts a lot of extra effort into making his restaurant good. He even stays overtime to clean the equipment, works menial labor in his locations whenever he's around, and has a great relationship with his employees.
  • Though he initially seems to write Jesse off as a liability, Season 4 sees him slowly come around on him. While part of this is due to his plan to pit Jesse and Walt against each other so he can safely dispose of the latter, he does seem to genuinely admire Jesse at certain points. For instance, when Jesse is getting set up in the cartels lab in "Salud", he starts to smirk when he sees Jesse rip the cooks a new one for their poor sanitation of their lab.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: A big-time drug kingpin who runs a hugely popular chain of fried chicken outlets and is well-known as a major philanthropist in the ABQ area. As another example, his Volvo station wagon is a perfect representation of respectable executive car, which lack any "cool" qualities, being as boring and unimpressive, as possible.
• Hidden Villain: Jimmy only knows Gus as a friendly staff member at Los Pollos Hermanos, and even when he's Saul, only knows him as the man behind the curtain as Mike seems to ensure they never meet again.
• Hypocrite:
  • He wants revenge on the Juarez Cartel for the murder of his lover Max. In the process, Gus takes great pleasure in taunting Hector over the slow destruction of his family and later tells Walt he will have his brother-in-law killed, and if he intervenes he will also kill Walt's entire family.
  • He's disgusted with Walt for having Jesse as a partner because he's a junkie and initially refuses to do business with Walt for that reason; Gus is a drug kingpin building his empire on the money of people just like Jesse, and he later adopts Jesse as his primary cook, claiming he "sees something in him".
  • He's surprised that Walt would be willing to kill two of Gus' low-level street dealers to protect Jesse, since Gus still sees him as just a junkie. In the very same episode, Gus orders Walt killed over this incident.
  • When Walt suggests that the Pinkman reacted rashly towards Gustavo's hitmen because he believes Gustavo ordered the death of the kid that killed Combo, he enters a state of Tranquil Fury, clearly pissed that Walter would insinuate such a thing. Cut to the end of Season 4, and Gustavo actively threatens to murder both Walt Jr and Holly simply to spite Walter should he get in his way.
  • He tells Mike that he doesn't believe fear to be an effective motivator. Except, in both this series and the prequel, he's shown to have no trouble intimidating his employees, as Walt and Nacho find out the hard way.
  • He considers Nacho a backstabber for trying to kill Hector nevermind that not only Gus is planning to destroy everything Hector and the Cartel made by faking submission but also keeps Mike as trusted enforcer even though he tried killing Hector after taking his bribe.
  • At several points Gus expresses a dislike for civilians being hurt by the Salamancas but he has no probelm with using Nacho's father against him and would have had Werner's wife killed if Mike didn't send her back to Germany. He further compounds this hypocrisy by threatening to have Walt's wife and children killed if he interfers with an attempt on Hank's life.
• Iconic Sequel Character: One of the show's most iconic characters and doesn't appear until the very end of season 2.
• Ignored Epiphany: A common interpretation of the wine scene, his last in the franchise, is that he realized he could be happy as the front he puts up for the world and was starting to become to mask. He seems horrified by this revelation and leaves before the sommelier can get back, committing himself to revenge.
• Implied Death Threat: He makes a serious one of these towards Mike when he becomes increasingly belligerent after Werner's death. While Mike isn't dumb enough to fully tell Gus where to stick it, he does blow him off harshly.
• It's All About Me: He is pretty angry to find that Nacho was responsible for Hector's heart attack. It doesn't occur to him that Nacho's father's safety may be more important than Gus getting his revenge for Max's death, which was arguably a direct consequence of them making the decision to deal meth in Don Eladio's territory. In other words, "business as usual." Even before he had Mike's car bugged in case he had the audacity of trying to kill his mortal enemy and even snarks at Mike's sense of justice when his reasons are similarly petty. While viewing Max's death in Breaking Bad may have caused viewers to sympathize with Gus, his actions on Better Call Saul arguably make him less sympathetic by showing how self-centered his revenge quest really is.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: As a variation of his infamous Blofeld Ploy. He and Victor murder Arturo Colon in front of Nacho Varga and hold him as he sees his life fade away to highlight three points: 1) No unwarranted posturing on the Cartel's part (Arturo demanded a bigger supply by brandishing a gun as a way of peacocking); 2) Nacho made a huge mistake by trying to off Hector Salamanca on his own and will step in line, even if he won't die today; 3) As punishment, Nacho will follow every single one of Gus' orders or else he'll serve him to the Salamancas as a gift. This way, Gus punishes Arturo for his cockiness and has Nacho under his thumb to act as a double agent within the Salamanca organization.
• Karmic Death: Hector's bomb destroys half of Gus' face, making him resemble a certain supervillain. The camera focuses on his uninjured side (the "legitimate" fast food mogul which everyone sees) — and slowly pans around to his disfigured side (representing the blood-soaked meth dealer). His death is also a reference to how a chicken will continue to walk around for a bit even after it's beheaded.
• Kick the Dog:
  • How does Gus react when Nacho is proving incapable of prying Lalo for more information? He gets his goons to take him on a road trip in the middle of the night, then shows him he's on the verge of murdering his father.
  • His threat to Walt that he would murder his entire family, including his infant daughter, should Walt interfere with Hank's murder. But it may have just been a bluff, since if Walt's family was suddenly wiped out, Jesse would probably figure out that Gus was responsible. Then again, Gus had no problem having Jesse kidnapped and forced to finish a batch, implying that Jesse’s loyalty was no longer needed to keep him in line.
• Knight of Cerebus: Granted, Krazy-8 and Tuco were quite dangerous, but the show still retained a prominent comedic element. However, after Gus is introduced, the show starts to gradually take a much darker turn.
• Lack of Empathy: Downplayed. Gus is very good at manipulating people because he can read people's intentions, but that doesn't mean he understands them. While he is able to bring Walt back into the meth business by exploiting his ego and desire to provide for his family, he cannot grasp why Walt would want to save his partner, who Gus views as a "contemptible junkie". Later on, he also cannot understand Jesse's (the guy he wanted dead not too long ago) desire to keep Walt alive, only recognizing this as a minor obstacle to his plans. Basically, Gus empathizes with people only when it suits his interests. When it doesn't, he just doesn't care.
• Latino Is Brown: Zig-zagged; despite being Hispanic and Giancarlo Esposito being light-skinned enough to potentially pass as ambiguously Mestizo, Walt specifically refers to him as black when asking about his whereabouts early on. This may indicate that he's specifically intended to be Afro-Chilean, despite them making up a very small minority of Chileans (assuming his claims about being Chilean are even true).
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Make no mistake, Gus is one evil dude. He runs a massive meth empire, cares little about civilian casualties, and has a ruthlessly single-minded devotion to his plan to destabilize the cartel. He's also a Benevolent Boss, fairly reasonable and polite to his workers, and is willing to be both pragmatic and sympathetic to the people working under him. This makes it very easy to root for him against the bloodthirsty and psychotic Salamancas.
• Lured into a Trap: At the climax of Season 4, Gus visits Hector at the nursing home to put him down after the latter went to the feds... only Hector didn't tell the feds anything (he was just trolling the feds) and the trip was made to coax Gus to get close to him and the pipe bomb Walt strapped to his wheelchair.
• Machiavelli Was Wrong: Gus refuses to accept Mike's suggestion that he use the threat of the Cousins coming after Walt in order to scare him into working for him, stating that "I don't believe fear to be an effective motivator." Subverted in season 4, where he's not above doing things like brutally killing Victor, or threatening to kill Walt's family in order to keep Walt in line. Double Subverted when his very ruthlessness proves to be his undoing. If Gus hadn't outright threatened Walt's family, Walt might not have been desperate enough that he was willing to poison Brock — a new Moral Event Horizon for Walt — to win Jesse back.
• Manipulative Bastard: The essence of his being and all of his actions throughout the series (not to mention over the last twenty years) are directed toward cornering the cartel while letting them think they're forcing him into it. He runs Albuquerque for them and pays them well for the privilege, bringing in so much money they can't risk disrupting his operation. He sabotages Hector's trucks, so Hector 'forces' him to move Salamanca product, which Gus does so well that he becomes the sole transporter for all cartel product into the US. All of this time, he's busily constructing a hidden superlab in secret, giving him both a choke-hold on meth coming from Mexico and his own source of product north of the border.
• Mask of Sanity: Gus is a cold-blooded killer motivated by revenge alone, he wants Hector to suffer and die by his machinations and will not accept anyone interfering. All the professionalism and politeness are just a cover for his obsession.
• Master Actor: His ability to remain in character as a polite, honest, and low-key restaurant owner. Best demonstrated when he successfully convinces George Merkert, Steven Gomez, and Tim Roberts that he's innocent in Hank's investigation.
• Moral Sociopathy: He isn't personally empathetic towards anyone, but he knows that he should at least pretend to care and avoid engaging in acts of pointless cruelty in order keep his business running smoothly.
• The Mourning After: Despite his mutual attraction with David the sommelier, and being in a relatively comfortable position to start a romance with him after several personal victories including getting away with Lalo's murder, he turns the opportunity down due to his steadfast loyalty to Max as well as his fear that anyone who gets close to him would be at risk of ending up the same way as Max did.
• Mysterious Past: All we know for certain is that he spent a part of his early life in Chile, and did something down there during the Pinochet dictatorship to make Don Eladio spare his life. The Chilean government has no record of his being born or living in that country, and Mike's investigations have turned up nothing. At least one fan theory surmises that Gus was linked with the Chilean secret service or even military intelligence, and was bailed out of the country with CIA assistance.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • His plan to take out the twins and Bolsa by sending the former after Hank was brilliant. However, Hank was on the outs with the DEA at that point, with his mental health deteriorating and his beatdown of Jesse getting him suspended. Even if Hank wasn't fired, he was seriously considering retirement at that point. His battle with the twins restored his reputation and, combined with him having more free time during recovery, has him brought on as a consultant for Gale's murder, which allows Hank to deduce Gus's true nature. Gus eventually tries to eliminate Hank as a result, which leads to Walt sacrificing the last of his scruples to successfully kill Gus.
  • He intimidates Walter and Jesse by killing Victor, hoping that he can scare them into submission. He does scare Walter, but he manages to scare him enough where Walt decides to plan to kill him, and eventually succeeds.
  • After wiping out the Cartel, he could have killed Hector without fear of reprisals, but keeps him alive so he can torment him. Had Gus not spared him then Walt may not have been able to kill him as getting Hector's help was instrumental in him accomplishing that.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Gus is loosely based on Philip Testa, a real-life mob boss who used a chicken restaurant as a front for his operations and was similarly assassinated by a rival gang member with a bomb.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Like Walt, he seems far from any kind of physical threat. Even when he was younger and driven by adrenaline and rage, a middle-aged mobster was able to restrain him without much trouble. He doesn't bother to carry a weapon, either. Usually. Subverted when he is revealed to be quite capable in the gunfight, albeit still understandably nervous from the near-miss.
• Non-Idle Rich: This is part of the image he cultivates. Despite owning a fairly large restaurant chain, he chooses to work alongside the employees at the flagship location, assisting them in running registers and cleaning floors. This gives him the cover of a kindhearted businessman to help hide his status as a meth kingpin.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: In Better Call Saul, despite it being Jimmy's story, he is the one to finally put an end to Lalo Salamanca, whose actions had cemented him as the biggest threat to all the protagonists on the criminal and legal side of the tale. Notably, this actually ends up being a bad thing, as his efficient disposal of Lalo and Howard's bodies afterwards in an undisclosed location to Jimmy left him paranoid that Lalo was still alive and preparing to seek vengeance on him, even years later, contributing to him becoming an emotional wreck afterwards and sinking deeper into his 'Saul Goodman' persona as a coping mechanism, which of course, led to the rise of Heisenberg and the destruction of everything he and Mike worked so hard to accomplish in this series, including their deaths and exposure as the leaders of a drug-dealing front. With his and Mike's deaths, Howard's body cannot be recovered by the present day, leaving Jimmy and the rest unable to achieve closure over his passing despite their best efforts.
• Noodle Incident: His whole past is chock full of these, but notably, when Bolsa claims Fring is an impersonal man all about business, Lalo retorts he did something in Santiago that speaks volumes of the opposite. Bolsa does not have an answer for this.
• "Not So Different" Remark: As Walt goes further off the deep end, he becomes more and more like Fring; deceptive, manipulative, and leading a double life. This trope was invoked by Saul when Gus is first mentioned:
  Walt: Well, what's his name?
  Saul: No idea... he's very low profile, he's careful like that... ya know, from what I do hear about him, he sounds a little like you.
• Not So Above It All:
  • He has a rare goofy moment in Better Call Saul where he throws the paper with Hector's shoe shit into the bin - and nails it in one shot all while wearing a smile on his face!
  • He lets his guard down in front of Mike saying a bullet to Hector would be far too humane - showing just how deeply he desire revenge against the man for killing Max.
  • For all his stoicism and professionalism, Gus would often take the time out of his day to visit Hector in the nursing home solely to bully him in a rather childish way.
• Not So Similar: While they have personality similarities, Gus himself does not believe that he and Walt are very similar at all due to what he perceived as Walt's carelessness; Walt, with his pride and ego, believes that he and Gus are very similar — criminal equals, in fact — and that he can run a meth empire just as well as Gus. This is ultimately one of the things that lead to Walt's own downfall. In the end, it turns out that Gus was right; Gus cautiously and successfully ran a massive multi-million dollar meth empire with not a single lead on himself for over twenty years, only falling because of the unavoidable Doom Magnet Walt screwing him. Walt's careless mistakes led to him being outed as Heisenberg after spending just a little over a year as a criminal and then died a few months after that.
  Mike: Listen, Walter. Just because you shot Jesse James, don't make you Jesse James.
• Not So Stoic:
  • He drops his stoic nature when he talks about a bullet to Hector's head being far too humane when meeting Mike for the second time.
  • He absolutely can't stand Lydia's nervousness, and his response to her complaining to him about Mike is to tell her "Then I suggest you give the man a badge", with a tranparently irritated tone.
  • The revelation that Lalo survived his assassination attempt has his paranoia leak through his stoic expression, showing slight nervousness even when changing clothes in his own house.
  • Seconds before Hector's pipe bomb goes off, his calm exterior finally crumbles into confusion and panic. His last act is to recompose himself from this, stoic to the bitter end.
• Not Worth Killing: His general opinion of Hector Salamanca - or rather, "Not Worth Killing Quick and Painless". Why waste time and ammo in having quick revenge on a man too despicable for such compassion instead of giving him the slow, painful demise he so richly deserves without raising any suspicions?
  Gus: A bullet to the head would have been far too humane.
• Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: Plays this straight when he's asked questions for a police investigation by the DEA.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Gus usually treats his employees well enough, which makes it all the more shocking when he kills Victor out of nowhere. Even Mike, his long-time henchman, is so caught completely off-guard by this sudden shift in mood that he briefly points a gun toward his own boss.
  • The first time we see Gus's mild-mannered facade crack, it's because Walt calls himself cautious and says that they're alike in that way. The mask immediately goes down so that Gus can correct that assumption.
  • It becomes clear that Lalo is the only cartel member that Gus genuinely fears as his presence has a tendency to unnerve him. The realization that Lalo survived his assassination attempt sends Gus into a spiral that sees the normally superhumanly stoic and calm drug lord become a Nervous Wreck. And you know shit has hit the fan when he actually pulls a gun out and successfully shoots him to death.
  • Uses this to his advantage during his shoot-out with Lalo where he uncharacteristically goes on a rant with more energy than when he loses his calm. He was copying Nacho's own final moments where used his final insults to the Salamanca to buy enough time to turn the tables.
  • When forced to relinquish over $700,000 dollars in cash as part of a Morton's Fork situation in Season 5 of Better Call Saul, Gustavo takes out his anger over the situation out on one of his Los Pollos Hermanos employees, forcing him to clean an air fryer over and over again despite it being spotless already. Given how respectful Gustavo acts towards his Los Pollos Hermanos employees, seeing him act downright abusive to one of them emphasizes just how bothered he is about the current situation.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Goes to great lengths to ensure Hector lives long enough to receive the comeuppance he had prepared for him, such as thwarting an assassination attempt, giving the old man CPR when he collapses, and flying in specialists from Baltimore to get Hector the best treatment.
• Out-Gambitted: By Walt, in the end.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: At least in terms of his Villainous Legacy. When Gustavo's crimes become public after the events of "Face Off", the DEA is initially focused on trying to catch his known associates, shell companies and business partners in what little they have to go on. However, after Heisenberg goes public himself, Gustavo is all but forgotten as the entire United States government attempts to hunt down Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, Saul Goodman and their respective associates, due to their criminal actions and influence being far more damaging and immediate.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • His business strategy regarding the Twins.
  • Mass-poisoning the cartel.
  • Works both ways during his conflict with Walt; on the one hand, it's satisfying seeing the arrogant chemist be brought down a peg after having Gale murdered as well as being an Ungrateful Bastard towards Gus' at first reasonable management style, but on the other hand, it's equally satisfying seeing Walt get his revenge on Gus after the latter threatens to have Hank murdered as well as Walt's whole family — including the infant daughter.
  • Tormenting Hector about his victories against the Juarez Cartel. Although the scenes are conveyed in such a way to inspire some measure of pity for Hector, the prequel series makes sure he absolutely has all of it coming.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Compensates his employees after Hector pays an extortion visit.
  • Promises not to take money from Mike that he could use for his family.
  • Also appears to have warm relations with Gale Boetticher.
  • He also tells Nacho to leave one of the Los Pollos restaurants in a rather fatherly tone, prior to blowing it up.
  • Gus may not give a shit about Saul, and only met Jimmy once when he was terrible at playing undercover, but he and Mike in "Green Light" decide that Saul doesn't need to know that the Salamanca contract-killer twins are around, knowing just how traumatised he is over Lalo Salamanca.
  • When he learns that Jesse is visiting his girlfriend's son Brock in the hospital, he decides that the day's batch can be forgiven and lets him stay with no repercussions. The reveal that Walt actually poisoned Brock and thus Gus genuinely had no idea what was happening removes the possibility of any ulterior motives.
• Perfect Poison: He uses the same bottle of tequila to dispatch Don Eladio and all his capos at once.
• Posthumous Character: Even after his death at the hands of Hector Salamanca and Heisenberg, Gustavo Fring's presence continues to influence the events of Breaking Bad's fifth season. His meth empire and offshore accounts are discovered by the DEA, allowing his criminal side to be exposed to the public, and Heisenberg spends the first half of the season trying to run the empire that he left behind and deal with the people Gustavo once knew personally.
• Playing Both Sides: Plays the US and Mexican governments against the Mexican cartel to seize control of the West Coast meth trade. Also pulls this by telling the Cousins that they can kill Hank in place of Walter — since Hank is the one who actually shot Tuco — but then proceeds to anonymously tip Hank off so that he can get the jump on them and take them out of the equation.
• Pragmatic Villainy: One of the things that makes him a Benevolent Boss at Los Pollos Hermanos. He listens to his employees, treats them with respect, and even does menial work around the restaurants when he has to. Gus does all of this because there's no money to be made in treating his employees badly; the opposite would cause him to rapidly lose money if word got out that he was a Bad Boss or a Pointy-Haired Boss. However, all of this only lasts as long as an employee is productive and helps the bottom line of his business. The moment that they're costing Gus money, they have a tendency to vanish. He's also very careful and meticulous about his base of operations, reputation, and the well-being of his supporters and employees and uses a string of manipulations and backups to ensure that they're well managed and under his thumb. It's his pragmatic approach to ending potential threats, secure his drug empire's success, and earning the loyalty of his followers that makes Gus as successful as he is deadly.
• Properly Paranoid: In the end, it turns out that he really should have turned Walt away as soon as he saw trouble. Played with, however, in that Jesse was the one Gus was more worried about, and while he does initially prove a major loose cannon, he ends up becoming arguably even more loyal to Gus than he is to Walt by late Season 4.
• Pulling the Thread: In spite of Mike giving him the excuse that Hector threatened his family, Gus, deductive as ever, points out that Mike was already willing to let bygones be bygones when he stole Salamanca's money and made him look like a fool.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Gus's decades-long quest for revenge against the cartel has some pretty bright highlights: over time, he kills every head honcho besides Hector, becoming the de-facto new don. He left Hector for last on purpose, with Hector being a near-vegetable who needs a bell to communicate for years. But as the last shot of him in Better Call Saul illustrates, he had to give up anything resembling love or joy in pursuit of his revenge. Plus, Walter White teams up with Hector to kill him not long after the cartel poisoning, meaning he was only top dog for a week at most and was killed by the one who started his revenge quest anyway.
• The Quiet One: Gus is very soft-spoken, calm, and collected even in the most stressful situations. He is also very, very dangerous, precisely because he knows how to remain quiet, unnoticed and strike without warning.
• Rags to Riches: Possibly. Gus himself monologues to a comatose Hector that he and his family were "quite poor" when he was young, but by the show's present he is a wealthy business owner and drug kingpin. Of course, this is Gus saying that, so it may or may not be entirely true.
• Real Men Cook: He's often seen cooking more than fried chicken in his home, like when he has Walt over for dinner and prepares paila marina.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He prefers to motivate his employees by appealing to their higher natures (Gale's love of science, Walt's desire to provide for his family) and only uses fear as a last resort. He also makes allowances for the personal situations of his employees and does his best to make sure that everyone is nice and happy under his employ.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Lalo has him dead to rights, Gus finally gets a chance to air out his true opinions on Don Eladio and the Salamancas while stalling long enough to catch Lalo off-guard so he can kill him:
  Gus: [in Spanish] Eladio... you greasy, bloated pimp. You talk of honor, but you have none. A pack of stray dogs fighting for scraps has more honor. Jackals. That's all you are! No vision. No patience. No thought. Stupid and impulsive! That is how I did all this! You couldn't see it, couldn't even conceive of it! And you Salamancas...you're the worst vermin of all. You say you believe in "blood for blood" but you only understand blood for money! You're whores! [in English] I understand blood for blood. Hector? I kept him alive. Kept him broken. I will save him to the last. Before he dies, he will know I buried every one of you.
• Revenge Before Reason: One of the main reasons for his war against the Mexican cartel is his desire for revenge. This turns out to be his Fatal Flaw in the season 4 finale when he chooses to kill Hector himself.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who exactly is Gustavo Fring? We know that he is a Chilean immigrant who likely fled to Mexico during the Pinochet regime, we know the origin of his vendetta against the Cartel, and that's about it. We don't know who he was beforehand, how he met Max Arciniega and Peter Schuler, what happened to his relatives, or why he fled Chile to begin with. We never even figure out if "Gustavo Fring" is his real name! A story he tells to a comatose Hector about Gustavo's youth subtly suggests he might not even be from Chile.
• Sadist: Downplayed. He doesn't really gain pleasure from the pain of others, and dislikes the Cartel's Stupid Evil brutality, especially when innocents are involved. But, if you cross him, even if you didn't mean to, he will make you suffer. His very drawn-out murder of Arturo stands out as one the cruelest deaths in Better Call Saul , and if his story about the coati is to be believed, he has been seeking prolonged vengeance on his enemies since he was seven.
• Saved by Canon: He's a major player in Breaking Bad until "Face Off" so he cannot die during Better Call Saul despite several close brushes with death (i.e, Lalo). He even alludes to this shortly before shooting Lalo in the neck.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: He's got his men bugging the cars of anyone who could become useful or are a liability to his organization. It says a lot that he could track Mike with little notice, someone who's just as pragmatic and cautious as Gus. Additionally, as a child he once waited hours to catch an animal that had eaten the fruit he cultivated and sold to support his family, having tracked it and trapped it earlier.
• Scary Black Man: While he doesn't look that imposing at first glance, he can be very intimidating when he needs to be and can turn downright vicious when crossed.
• Secret Test of Character: He's been doing these for a long time, secretly testing Mike's abilities from the shadows.
• Self-Made Man: Gus is able to cover the distribution of drugs by simply using the refrigerator trucks that were used to deliver supplies to the Los Pollos Hermanos restaurants, rather than hiring "mules" to distribute the product (although "mules" would be used to get the drugs from the restaurants to the dealers). Mike makes it very clear to Walt that Gus was so successful with his business because Gus handled so much himself and started with nothing 20 years prior. In Gus' own words:
  "I grew up quite poor. We lived in the hills. In a place my brothers built from things they found. Metal sheeting, plywood. When it rained, it smelled like hay. We were always hungry."
• Self-Poisoning Gambit: How he dispatches the heads of the Juarez Cartel. He brings an extremely rare and expensive bottle of tequila as a peace offering to his meeting with Don Eladio. The Don insists that Gus drink first, so Gus does, tricking the Don and the rest of the capos into believing that the tequila was safe and thus also drinking. Unlike the others, Gus has the advantage of having taken some pills first and then going and inducing vomiting, which helps slow down the poison long enough for him to get medical attention.
• Serious Business: The restaurants he owns might be a front but he maintains and demands only the most excellent quality and service from them and their civilian employees. While it's partially meant to be a metaphor for stealing drugs, money, and machinery from his illegal narcotics network, the segment in his Loss Prevention employee training video about workers being tempted to "skim" fries from the meals they prepare for customers goes into elaborate detail about how unacceptable the literal act is for him (complete with a drooling chef and Gus tying him up).
• Shadow Archetype: Inverted. He's everything Heisenberg wants to be. Feared, powerful, rich, and is one of the biggest drug lords in the region, with state-of-the-art infrastructure. But as Mike later puts it in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Heisenberg's no Fring, what with his ego and pride clouding his judgment. Needless to say, when Heisenberg kills Fring and tries to take over the operation, it all goes downhill.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Male example. He cooks meals for guests he invites for dinner in his home and performs chores like throwing out the garbage at his fast food restaurants, then as a drug kingpin, he is brutally killing his own employees for their failures.
• The Sociopath: Generally only with what naturally comes with being a drug kingpin, unlike Eladio. It should be noted that a large part of Fring's motivation for even remaining in the drug trade (despite being rich) is to avenge his fallen lover, Max (though this is undercut by him continuing his operation after he gets revenge). Eladio himself seems to be aware of Fring's bottled-up feelings and spitefully suggests he dispose of them. For his criminal line of work, Gus is genuinely an affable and fair boss, but he won't hesitate to violently and remorselessly dispose of anyone that's become a liability to his operations.
• Spotting the Thread: When Kim tells him that Jimmy talked Lalo into sending Kim to assassinate Gus instead of sending Jimmy, Gus realizes that whichever would-be assassin was only supposed to serve as a distraction and Lalo's real target is elsewhere.
• Start of Darkness: The death of his partner Max turned him into the cold, ruthless meth kingpin we all know and love, although it's implied that he had some dark history in Chile before ever coming to North America. A story of his childhood that he tells in Better Call Saul suggests that he may have always had a taste for vengeance, given that he snared a coati, accidentally wounded it, and kept it rather than mercy killing it, all because it was eating fruit from a tree that he had cultivated.
• Stepford Smiler: Type C and terrifyingly so. That which lies under the smile is Nightmare Fuel-inducing. Arguably the depressed type as well where Max is concerned.
• The Stoic: Not even the terror-inducing Salamanca Cousins scare him at all. Then there's his absolutely cold-blooded murder of Victor, one of his most loyal enforcers. He kills the man in a painful and drawn out manner, casually drops the body in front of three men paralyzed with fear, cleans himself off from all the blood, and puts his suit back on; all without a single change in expression.
• Straight Edge Evil: Gus lives quite comfortably, but apart from that has few visible vices and even expresses distaste for the addicts who buy his product. His one real indulgence in life ends up getting him killed.
• Straight Gay: When Walt visits Gus's house to discuss business matters he takes his statement about having a wife and kids at face value, and his sexuality is quite ambiguous for most of the show to the point that, without other characters lampshading it, one would not necessarily realize he and Max were more than just business partners.
• Supreme Chef: Gus has standards: from the best goddamn spicy-fried chicken in the state to a carefully prepared gastro-foodie delight cooked at home... to producing the highest standard of meth in the business. If he can't do it all himself, he makes sure to train and supply the people who can with the best available ingredients.
• Taunting the Unconscious: A rather grim, twisted example: Besides paying for his treatment, Gus visits Hector in the hospital. He tells him a story about the way he made a creature suffer beyond any reason by keeping it alive for having crossed him. As such, he's determined to keep Hector alive... since he's not done with him.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Part of his perfectionism nature is that Gus tends to go all in, be it the construction of the superlab, his revenge against the cartel or hiding himself from Lalo's potential attack he takes huge amount of time and money to completely destroy his enemies and run his empire like clockwork.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Invoked, and implied to be why he dresses like middle-aged middle-management.
• Tragic Villain: Downplayed as whilst the murder of his closest friend made him a worse man, it was still pretty naughty of him to deal drugs in Don Eladio's territory. Although he hides it well, underneath all his ruthlessness and professional exterior, Gus is an empty, miserable man who has let his obsession with vengeance destroy any possibility of him finding a happy life.
• Tranquil Fury: He never gets openly enraged; when Gus is more quiet than usual, be very afraid. This can be seen when he and Walt have a very intense discussion in the Season 3 finale, in the wake of Tomas's death and Walt killing the two dealers supposedly responsible. Gus looks like he is trying his hardest not to strangle Walt himself.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He ensnared and tortured a coati when he was seven just because the small creature decided to eat from a fruit tree he was cultivating.
• Twofer Token Minority: He's Chilean and gay.
• Undignified Death: Gets killed by the man he hated the most who was stuck in a wheelchair, and after he had tried to kill that same man. That said, he subverts this as much as he's able to in his final moments, walking out of the room and fixing up his tie despite missing half his face and his skull being clearly visible, out of sheer willpower.
• The Unfettered: Obsessed with avenging Max's death, and not above harming innocents along the way.
• Unflinching Walk: Into a hail of sniper bullets. And again in his death scene.
• Verbal Tic: Tends to say "Unfortunate", a lot.
• Villain Ball: Brings Jesse along when he taunts Hector over Joaquin's death and wiping out the Juarez cartel, even though he doesn't actually say or do anything and Gus probably could have just shown Hector a photo. This lets Walt learn about Gus and Hector's enmity and ultimately leads to his death.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • A sociopathic murderer who is ultimately proven correct about Walter, whose carelessness destroys both of their empires and gets himself killed not even a year and a half into the business.
  • Mike defends attempting to assassinate Hector Salamanca with the fact that he pushed the Relative Button. Gus makes the valid point that he’d already let that go by taking the man's money.
• Villain Tritagonist: He gets more and more screentime as Better Call Saul progresses from Season 3 onward and is pretty firmly in Tritagonist territory when Nacho leaves the position vacant at the beginning of Season 6, where dealing with the fallout of the failed hit on Lalo shows us some more of Gus's personal life when he is also at his most paranoid.
• Villain with Good Publicity: He's the well-respected owner of the successful Los Pollos Hermanos chain of chicken restaurants, who publicly supports the DEA at fundraisers and sends in free chicken to all the cops waiting by Hank's hospital bedside. He even contributed to Walt's cancer treatment fund.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • An eerily calm example in Box Cutter, knowing he's been Out-Gambitted by Walt and Jesse, he theatrically strolls around the room before ultimately slashing Victor's throat and then telling Walt and Jesse to get back to work.
  • When Hector has a stroke, Gus rushes to his aid and goes to great lengths to keep his enemy alive and conscious so he can execute his vendetta, while frantically cursing at him not to die under his breath. He also personally kills Arturo in a gruesome manner to show Nacho his displeasure of almost being robbed of his revenge.
  • After the Werner incident, Gus is in a perpetual state of this. His expression is a perpetual Death Glare and he is simmering with Tranquil Fury in every scene he's in.
  • A Downplayed example with his death scene as his breakdown is brief and he Faces Death with Dignity immediately after, but noteworthy due to the complete shattering of his usually stoic exterior. Right as he's about to inject Hector and kill him, he looks at him...and sees Hector finally looking back at him...with an almost apologetic and remorseful expression. Gus' lip quivers slightly at the sight, and as Hector's face twists into a visage of pure fury, he leans back in shock, as if trying to see if he's seeing this right. And then when he looks at Hector's hand, and sees the wiring leading to a pipe bomb under Hector's wheelchair... he gapes at Hector in shock, realizing then and there that he was tricked, and he had been led right into a trap. All he can do at that point is firmly break his usual Soft-Spoken Sadist front by letting out a loud, raw, wordless shout of anger, confusion, and fear, as he leaps from his chair in a vain attempt to escape.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: He's got no qualms with threatening Nacho's father to force Nacho's cooperation. And of course, there's his famous threat to Walt's family.
• Who's Laughing Now?: The Mexican cartel killed Gus' partner and mocks him about it. He ends up killing all of them.
• Wicked Cultured: Knows his wine, even if he doesn't allow himself to enjoy it very often.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Walter. They used to have genuine respect for each other at the beginning of their relationship, but that completely vanishes once Gus realizes how much of a reckless egomaniac Walt really is and conversely when Walt realizes how sociopathically ruthless Gus is.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: After killing the cartel in Salud, Gus goes to Hector Salamanca to gloat to him. At that point he could have just killed him there after informing him of the cartel's demise (along with Joaquin) but he clearly wanted Hector to suffer first. This gave Hector the opening needed to team up with Walter White and ultimately bring about Gus's demise.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Oh boy, is he ever. Under that concerned, upright citizen's face hides a world of hurt for people who cross him.
• Would Hit a Girl: "I will kill your wife. I will kill your son. I will kill your infant daughter."
• Would Hurt a Child: When he promises to stop using children in his drug business, it's implied he has the children under his employ (including the kid brother of Jesse's girlfriend) killed. Later, when he fires Walt, he warns him not to interfere in his dealings with Hank, promising to murder his son and infant daughter.
• Xanatos Gambit: Sending the Twins after Hank. No matter who loses, he wins.
• You Have Failed Me: Initially, he appears to be a nicer, stabler person than other drug lords Walt and Jesse have encountered (and by comparison, he arguably is), but he soon starts showing his more ruthless side:
  • He first pulls this on both Walt and Jesse after they kill a couple of his drug dealers in revenge for their murdering Tomás Cantillo, and quickly begins plotting to eliminate them both and bring Gale back into the fold as the lab's sole cook, with things going From Bad to Worse when Jesse kills Gale on Walt's orders. While Gus eventually warms up to Jesse again, he remains permanently soured on Walt.
  • When Victor screws up and is seen leaving Gale's apartment after possibly leaving evidence there, he shows himself to be just as willing as Tuco to violently dispose of an employee who has become a liability.
  • Walt and Gus's tensions come to a head in "Crawl Space" after nearly driving Hank to their Super Lab, narrowly avoiding by causing an accident. Walt is abducted and "Fired" in the desert with Hank being marked for death. Gus doubles down and threatens Walt's entire family should he attempt to interfere with his operations or the hit.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: It's indicated that he only ever intended Walt to be a temporary solution while Gale (and later Jesse) was trained up to precisely duplicate his formula, but was content to let Walt stick around until his cancer inevitably returned and he either died or become too ill to work. However, Walt ends up causing him to pull the trigger prematurely when he proves to be too much of a liability.

Important Lieutenants

Mike Ehrmantraut

Michael "Mike" Ehrmantraut

Portrayed By: Jonathan Banks

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul | El Camino^note Flashback only

"The lesson is: if you’re gonna be a criminal, do your homework."

"We all make our choices, and those choices - they put us on a road. Sometimes, those choices seem small, but they put you on the road. You think about getting off... but eventually, you're back on it... and nothing - nothing - can be done about that.''

A Marine Corps veteran, ex-Philadelphia Police Department officer, and a calm and calculating career criminal, Mike works for both Gustavo Fring and Saul Goodman as a private investigator, head of security, and hitman. A true professional that has extensive knowledge of how to operate on both sides of the law without detection, Mike holds the respect of just about everyone in the criminal underworld.

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• The Ace: Pulls off all assignments given to him flawlessly. When things go wrong, he reacts professionally (like his truck getting shot in Better Call Saul).
• Affably Evil: A nice guy and a loving grandfather, but he is a remorseless killer who'll kill you without hesitation if it's his job.
• A Father to His Men: His partnership with Jesse is an example. He threatens Walt for calling the police on Tyrus Kitt (who'd been staking out Hank's house on Gus' orders) and he gets very serious with Lydia for suggesting that Gus' former employees be killed to prevent them from talking^note ostensibly because Mike knows that killing them, even one at a time, might lead the others to turn to the police for protection out of fear that they'll be next. Mike even goes as far as to compensate their hazard pay himself, by restarting a meth operation with Walt, to honor a deal and keep them from talking. A lot of this is likely out of guilt over the death of his biological son, Matty.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Mike dies refusing to sell out the Los Pollos security team, awesomely telling Walt where to go and stick it. This gets Mike, one of the more likable characters on the show, killed by Walt when he goes into a rage, and even Walt seems to come to regret it when he realizes how pointless it was. His actual death scene, as he stares into the sunset while dying in peace, is incredibly somber, and his death pushes Jesse further away from Walt, breaking up the partnership that the show ran on up to that point.
• Ambiguously Trained: It's doubtful that he would have been able to wipe out an entire armed Colombian gang in the desert with a sniper rifle from just being a former cop in "Bagman". It's strongly implied that he was a sniper in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War, based on his familiarity with the M40 sniper rifle used by Marine snipers and complaints about the wood stock warping in the jungle, but it's only clarified outright on invokedthe official podcast.
• Ambiguous Start of Darkness: At one point Mike gives Walter a speech about how he doesn't believe in second chances or half measures because when he was a cop Mike tried to do a Scare 'Em Straight with a serial Domestic Abuser, only for the guy to kill his wife two weeks later. Combined with Hank's statement that Mike's time as a cop "ended dramatically" most fans think the abuser case was why Mike broke bad, but it's never actually confirmed. Better Call Saul shows that Mike (along with the rest of his department) was already a Dirty Cop before he moved to New Mexico after the revenge-killing of two crooked cops who killed his son Matty for not being entirely willing to play ball. However, it's unclear if that was his first murder, or if he already covertly worked as a hitman while on the force. The finale of Better Call Saul reveals that Mike took his first bribe in 1984.
• Anti-Villain: Types 1 and 2 He's an incredibly efficient assassin who stops at nothing to carry out his job, but he hardly ever holds any ill will towards his targets, and is a pretty decent guy when he's not on the job — even better, he manages to keep professional and personal life separate. He's a Noble Demon who refuses to harm innocents but is ruthless when dealing with enemies. He's also a woobie Tragic Villain who became evil due to the death of his son at the hands of corrupt cops.
• Anyone Can Die: A direct victim of Walt's "empire building", at the end of "Say My Name".
• Ascended Extra: Goes from a supporting character on Breaking Bad to the deuteragonist of Better Call Saul. He was originally intended to be a cameo, but his one appearance was well-received.
• The Atoner: By providing for his granddaughter and doting on her, he's making up for his participation in police corruption creating a situation in which his honest son, Matty, was eventually murdered for not going along quickly enough, even after Mike pushed him to become corrupt.
• The Alcoholic: Fakes it as part of his scheme to kill the two police officers who murdered his son and got away with it. It works.
  • Later goes through a period of Drowning My Sorrows for real due to his guilt after killing Werner Zeigler.
• Always Someone Better: Lalo Salamanca. For some reason, Lalo always seems to be just one step ahead of Mike. First, Mike is unable to find Werner before Lalo is able to find him, and Werner gives Lalo information about the superlab. Later, Mike takes his men away from guarding Saul's apartment, mistakenly believing that Lalo wouldn't show up there, which leads to the murder of Howard Hamlin. After the incident, Lalo is easily able to stay fully aware of and outmaneuver Mike's chase, with Lalo noting to Gus during their confrontation at the lab that he knew exactly how long before Mike would show up.
• Ascended Extra: Seen once in the Season 2 finale of Breaking Bad, seemingly as a simple PI and fixer for Saul, but his role grows in importance as it's revealed that he's actually Gus' primary enforcer.
• Avenging the Villain: He initially returns from Mexico to shoot Walter when he gets the news that Gus is dead. Jesse talks him out of it.
• Bald of Evil: Or bald of anti-villainy. He's a remorseless hitman and an antagonist towards Walt after all.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Throughout much of Better Call Saul, Mike attempts to remain a street smart, yet still benevolent Jerk with a Heart of Gold, trying to keep himself as morally pure as possible and only targeting criminals he believes deserve their fate, even as he's Slowly Slipping Into Evil while working for Gustavo Fring. Over the course of the show however, Mike is forced to commit several terrible acts that eat him up inside, all of which push him towards being more amoral and merciless. By the time we see him in Breaking Bad, Mike has become far more ruthless.
• Being Evil Sucks: He made his peace with it long ago but confesses to Jimmy if he had a time machine he would go back to when he took his first bribe.
• Being Personal Isn't Professional: Mike has learned to handle this trope perfectly since his son's death. It's only Walter that causes him to subvert it when he gets on Mike's temper.
• Berserk Button: He keeps it under control but tends to be more aggressive and grumpy when someone comments on his age or derisively call him gramps. Jimmy immediately retracts his offer of elder law advice after Mike stares him down and later as Saul he pre-emptively apologizes when he refers to Hank's investigation on Mike as harassment of a senior citizen, which earns him a side glance from Mike. He also makes sure to painfully overextend the arm of a mugger after he called him gramps a bunch of times.
  • Tying in with Code of Honour, endangering civilians, in his words, does not sit right with him.
• Best Served Cold: When Hector threatens him into giving false testimony to the DA about the beatdown from Tuco, Mike takes a calculated revenge path: namely, monitoring Hector's drug operation looking for a weakness to exploit.
• Boring, but Practical: One of the traits that make Mike so dangerous is his simplistic approach to his work. He won't fire a hundred bullets if he only needs one, he makes clear and concise observations to get the upper hand on opponents, and he favors reliable, basic equipment and vehicles that keep attention away from him.
• Breakout Character: So popular after his initial appearance that he was brought back as a supporting character and later went on to become the Deuteragonist of Better Call Saul.
• Broken Ace: Despite being among some the most capable of people one can encounter, whether in the criminal world or out, Matty's death completely devastated him in ways he's never been able to recover from.
• Broken Pedestal: To his son Matt, who was also a cop. Unlike Mike, Matt was averse to taking money from busts, whereas Mike knew to do it in order to ensure his partners that he had their backs. It crushed Matt for him to find out that his father was corrupt like the other cops.
• Bullying a Dragon: Mike really should have known better than deliberately provoking Walt, even though he's physically stronger. That's not counting the numerous times he attempted to kill him or threatened to do so in Seasons 3, 4, and 5.
• The Cameo: Appears briefly in a flashback in El Camino. He and Jesse are discussing their futures at a riverbank. Mike was actually the one who suggested Jesse go to Alaska to start fresh.
• The Cassandra: As revealed in Better Call Saul, Mike warned Saul that aligning with Walt was a bad idea, as Walt is a complete amateur who would bring them all nothing but trouble. Saul, too tempted by the money he could rake in, doesn't listen to him, with the end result being Mike's death and Saul's exile to Omaha.
• Clean Up Crew: For both Saul and Gus. One of the first tasks we see him performing is removing all evidence of drug abuse from Jesse's condo and coaching him on how to handle the police when they come to retrieve Jane's body.
• Code of Honour: No matter how cold and ruthless Mike becomes during his time as a criminal across Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, he does have some rules and is among the most professional people you'll find in the criminal underworld.
  • If you're 'in the game' (I.E. a criminal), then Mike considers you fair game. You can have a spouse, kids, have completely justifiable reasons for what you're doing, and even be Mike's friend, and he'll still have little problem threatening, hurting, or even killing you if he feels he needs to. However, if you're not in the game, Mike won't go after you, and will even actively work to protect you as much as he can. If an innocent does suffer or die as a result of Mike's actions, he clearly feels terrible about it and does whatever he can to make amends for it.
  • If he tells someone he's going to do something, he's going to do it, or he'll compensate you if he can't for some reason. Keeping his word is something that he feels separates him from other criminals.
  • Gradually deconstructed however, especially in the latter episodes of Better Call Saul; having a code of honour sounds admirable but ultimately doesn't mean very much when you nevertheless willingly work for and associate with vicious criminals who have none. Nacho's father Manuel pretty much spells this out for Mike when Mike tries to console him that the men who killed his son will eventually face a form of justice, making it clear that as far as Manuel is concerned, any code that Mike tries to console himself with means nothing and he's just another criminal.
• Cold Sniper: His familiarity with the Marine Corp M40 sniper rifle in "Gloves Off" and comments about the rifle's history imply that he served as one in Vietnam. His skills come in handy when he needs to shoot down some cartel button men preparing to kill Jimmy.
• The Comically Serious: His unyielding attitude and lack of amusement towards Jimmy's schemes and antics makes for a good source of comedy.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: For Mike life as a Dirty Cop was something that you just had to suck up and do to be part of the team. Then two of his "teammates" killed his son for putting them at risk. That caused Mike to kill them, which caused him to be put under investigation and lose his job. That in turn caused him to become a criminal himself, which caused him to be associated with Gus Fring. Read down the page to see how that ends.
• Consolation Backfire: He tries to alleviate his own guilt by informing Manuel Varga of Nacho's death, and then assures him that the Salamancas will receive justice for what they have done. Manuel has none of it, rejecting Mike's notions of justice as little more than revenge, before dismissing him as being just like all the other criminals.
• Consummate Professional: Very, very little even comes close to making him lose his cool. He's seen everything and worked most angles out. The one thing that angers him is people who refuse his advice. He's touchy since accepting his advice got his son killed.
• Cool Car: Well, his Chrysler Fifth Avenue typically isn't considered even remotely cool, but here it feels like well-maintained, reliable ride.
• Cool Old Guy: Anti-Villain he may be, but face it: you wish you could get to be this cool when you reach his age.
• Cop Killer: He kills the corrupt cops behind his son's murder.
• Corrupt Cop: Downplayed, at least according to Mike. Mike argues that if a cop wanted to stay alive and make sure the other guys had their backs, you simply just went along with whatever was going on. Matt, his son, didn't have the same philosophy, which ended up getting him ambushed by his own partners. Given how easily he can make connections with the underworld and seems already an expert in drug dealing, if he did not like being corrupt he knew how to be competent.
• The Corrupter: How he sees himself. The system couldn't break his son Matt down... but he could, and did. It's hard to say if Mike blames himself more for doing that or for not letting his son go down in a blaze of riotous (if bureaucratic) fury.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His tenure as a police officer in Philadelphia not only involved corruption, but missions and operations probably not standard for a cop, most likely using skills he'd learned elsewhere. His time there ultimately ends under "dramatic" circumstances, eventually following him to Albuquerque.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Five-O", which discusses a bit about his family life, and his deceased son.
• Deadpan Snarker: Occasionally; his professionalism makes him more prone to simply keep his mouth shut however.
• Death Glare: Whenever Mike gets angry at someone, he tends to express it by silently simmering while he venomously stares them down. If he is really pissed off about something, his usual tell is that his glare gets a slight Eye Twitch to it.
• A Death in the Limelight: While he was never lacking in screen time, he basically becomes the third lead of Breaking Bad's fifth season after Walt and Jesse and he's dead by the penultimate episode of the first half.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Conscience. Of all the criminals in the show, Mike is the most morally-conscious of all and a moral barometer for all the other evil of characters. He makes no secret about preferring other criminals follow an Honor Among Thieves philosophy and often will advocate against hurting anyone who isn't in the game. However, even if he'd prefer they didn't, his actions repeatedly cause indirect harm and death to the innocent civilians he tries to protect. While it's hinted that he was once upon a time a good man and still in the present day tries to hold onto some semblance of human decency, his perpetual acts of violence and crime render any efforts of honor or consciousness he makes ultimately moot.
• Despair Event Horizon: Much of the light in his life died when Matt did, and it's very clear he blames himself for crossing the lines that ultimately led to it. He now only focuses on enjoying time with and providing for his remaining family by whatever means going, preferably in a way that can only directly bite him. The Atoner, Empty Shell, Vengeance Feels Empty, Miles to Go Before I Sleep and/or Death Seeker: it's open to interpretation what proportion of any of them he is.
• Determinator: Mashing his buttons just switches on an ostensibly low-key Energizer bunny... who... will... make... you... pay. However long he has to chip away at you for; however many careful steps or slices it takes to get there. As his son's murderers and Hector found out.
• Deuteragonist: Of Better Call Saul. He even gets his own focus episode.
• Dirty Cop: Not in the shows, but in his backstory he was this, and doesn't seem especially proud of it.
• Disappointed in You: Gordon Smith explained that that the colder relationship between Mike and Saul in BB was down to Mike actually kinda liking Jimmy, but that like got less and less the more Jimmy morphed into Saul, seeming to do his utmost best to prove Chuck right. Having to obscure Howard's death — an innocent who wasn't 'in the game' — because of Jimmy's scam putting him in the wrong place at the wrong time, and furthermore having to posthumously smear his reputation in support of Jimmy's narrative that he was a drug addict, seems to have been the point that killed any respect Mike had for Jimmy, outside of his usefulness as a criminal lawyer. Furthermore, he's revealed to have advised Saul against going into business with Walter after tracking him down after their meeting in the desert, only for Saul to ignore his advice, which puts a further spin on his dissatisfaction with both men throughout Breaking Bad.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In "Inflatable", while waiting for the elevator, Jimmy tells him about his experience with Tuco and tells him he made the right choice to take Hector's offer and even offers to waive his fee for his service. When the elevator arrives, Mike tells Jimmy to take the next elevator and refuses to take Jimmy's offer.
  • Later, in Season 4, he calls out the group therapy session for wallowing in self-pity, after weeks of refusing to speak, suggesting that he doesn't want anyone else's pity.
• Doting Grandparent: He clearly loves his granddaughter more than anything else in the world. Although he loses his shit on his granddaughter after he kills Werner and briefly quits working for Gus Fring.
• Do Wrong, Right: Gives advice like this to Nacho and the hopelessly naive Daniel Wormald, who often don't think out their criminal schemes all the way through.
• The Dragon: If Gus needs something done and there's no room to have it done wrong, it's likely Mike doing it. Saul thinks that he's this to him, but is proven wrong when Mike threatens to beat him.
• Dragon Their Feet: He was still in Mexico recovering from his wounds when Gus was killed and was thus in no position to have helped him.
• Dramatic Irony: Mike's turn to the dark side began when he started accepting bribes to show the other dirty cops he "had their backs." Two of the corrupt officers murdered Mike's son in cold blood because he might have told the truth about them, even though it would have been his word against the rest of the department's. On a lesser but still painful note, a large part of the "dirty" aspect of his career as a cop involved him and the other corrupt officers taking confiscated drug money and keeping it for themselves. Years later, the money he saved for his family was seized for being connected to drugs.
• Due to the Dead: When he has to bury Howard Hamlin's body, he treats it as respectfully as he can, recognizing that he was an innocent who was just in the wrong spot at the wrong time and even giving a frown to show his feelings at such a pointless murder.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Appears briefly at the beginning of "ABQ" to help Jesse prep for the police inquiry following Jane's death, without any indication of how important to the Breaking Bad universe he'd later become.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: His role as Gus' right-hand man is clearly decided later on, considering that he runs errands for Saul in his first few appearances as though he's just another one of his henchmen. When introducing Walt to Gus, Saul even says that he only knows Gus through "a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy", even though Mike should be the only guy he needs to know at that point. Personality-wise, Mike also seems to be a lot more ruthless than his later characterization, telling Walt that he has learned from his cop days to always kill liabilities instead of merely taking them out of the picture, which contradicts him being reclutant to kill Werner in the prequel and Gus' imprisoned men in Season 5.
• Easily Forgiven: At the end of "Full Measure", he tried to kill both Walt and Jesse and threatened to break Saul's legs. No more than two episodes later, Walt tells him that he understands he was just doing a job and Jesse comes to greatly respect Mike and even like him more than Walt. When Mike enters a partnership with them after Gus' death, Saul is the only one to be bitter about Mike's past actions and Walt pretty much just tells him to get over it. There is still plenty of tension between Walt and Mike but that is due to Mike's anger over Walt killing Gus and Walt's greed. The times Mike tried to kill Walt and Jesse aren't brought up much, though Walt does mention to Saul that Mike had threatened Jesse and himself before, but they're still willing to put aside their differences for a common goal.
• Empty Shell: Jonathan Banks describes Mike as having lost his soul but at the same time being fearless and goal driven. There's a strong implication that the death of his son Matty may have been the cause of this.
• Enigmatic Minion: To a point. Despite his dedication to Gus, he is still a man that is hard to predict.
• Entitled Bastard: He gets pissed off about Jimmy needing his approval (read: treating him like a Chuck replacement) but he does know how to use it for his own advantage. Jimmy slightly calls him out on it in "Witness".
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Breaking Bad: He's introduced cleaning up the site of Jane's death and does it with ruthless precision, expertly getting rid of any traces of drugs, wiping down every site to cover his tracks, and coaching Jesse through what to say to the police, even slapping him when he's unresponsive. It shows everything we need to know about him: he's thorough and efficient at his job, covers his tracks, and doesn't care much for other people's feelings if they get in his way.
  • Better Call Saul: His first interactions with Jimmy are him steadfastly and pedantically enforcing the parking sticker system and rolling his eyes at all of Jimmy's excuses, establishing Mike as having a set of rules that he follows, and he doesn't care what anyone else thinks about them.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His granddaughter and, as revealed in the prequel, his family in general including his daughter-in-law.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Mike is no saint, but he still has a strong moral code he doesn't break easily. He particularly dislikes innocent civilians being put in danger; having to cover up the deaths of Howard Hamlin and Drew Sharp in particular greatly upsets him.
  • Mike has no qualms about murder but only if it is directly part of the job. Jesse is able to see through his bluff of killing a petty thief and Nacho immediately knew he was the one that stole Hector's truck because no one else would bother sparing a cartel mule.
  • Likewise, Mike is no petty thief. He's more than happy to steal from someone either to prove a point (the Kettlemans) or to damage an enemy's operations (the Salamancas) but him refusing to help Jimmy steal Mr. Neff's Hummel figurine shows he above burgling someone purely for monetary gain, especially if the target hasn't wronged anyone in anyway.
  • Mike's professionalism also means that he's very impersonal towards the people that he works for and/or targets. In particular, he refuses to give his opinion on Chuck McGill to Jimmy, as he doesn't see the need to divulge his feelings on a guy he hardly knows.
  • As he tells Lydia he is not going to murder the men he hand-picked himself just to be sure of their silence. He'd rather make sure they are paid off to take the years even if has to put up with Walter for more than he wants to.
  • Ultimately deconstructed at several points however (particularly in the Better Call Saul episode "Fun and Games" where Nacho's father dismisses Mike's insistence that his son's killers will receive a form of justice). Mike's moral code may make him slightly better than many of the others around him, but ultimately he still chooses to work as an enforcer and murderer for a vicious criminal cartel, and he willingly works with and for those who lack such a code, meaning his actions nevertheless cause harm and death both directly and indirectly. Despite what he might believe and tell himself, he still makes the world a worse place and any moral or ethical distinction his standards might give him over anyone else we encounter is ultimately negligible.
• Evil Feels Good: Is put in a really good mood after stealing $250,000 from Hector's truck, enough to buy drinks for an entire bar or be a bit flirty with the waitress. Though it ends the moment he learns that a bystander was killed by Hector as a result of the heist's aftermath.
• Evil Old Folks: Well, more like "Anti-Villainous Old Folks". He is around his 60's or 70's but is in surprisingly good form to be The Dragon to a ruthless drug lord.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids:
  • He dotes on his granddaughter Kaylee and hopes to form a large nest egg for her with all of his work. Part of it also stems from wanting to make up for what he did to her father and his son, Matty.
  • Better Call Saul shows him as proud to have raised his son Matty into one of the few honest cops on the force, when he himself was corrupt throughout his career. It tore Mike up inside to push his son to betray his morals to prevent him from getting killed, especially since Matty wound up dead anyway due to his partners' paranoia.
• Experienced Protagonist: Of the Deuteragonist variety. He is a former crooked cop who knows both sides of the law, can beat and kill people half his age with no difficulty thanks to old reflexes and thorough planning. It is also hinted that he was in the service during The Vietnam War.
• Face Death with Dignity: After he gets fatally shot by Walt, he gets out of his car, runs away, and sits down to watch the sunset over a river. When Walt catches up with him and tries to apologize, Mike tells him to shut up and let him die in peace.
• Face–Heel Turn: Had one years before the start of the series. See Start of Darkness below.
• Fatal Flaw: Self-Righteousness & Hypocrisy - His high and mighty attitude and tendency to rub it in other criminals faces ultimately makes him fall out with Walt and gets him killed, not to mention ignoring his own advice about not taking half-measures.
  • Ultimately, another of Mike's core flaws is his inability to be honest about his feelings, both to himself and the people he cares about, so he buries his feelings and ignores them. It makes him effective as a hitman, but a mess as a human being.
  • Like the other characters who go up against Walt, he made the mistake of underestimating him and viewing him as less serious a threat when he should have known better. He dies for the trouble he was put through.
• Faux Affably Evil: Puts on a front of this to scare Lydia, "Where will I shoot you? In the head, that's a pistol, not a gun. We're expecting precision here.".
• Foil:
  • To Walt. Season 5 reveals that Mike has a considerable amount of money stashed away in his granddaughter's name, making him and Walt two men committing crimes for their families. However, Mike's professionalism and caution allow his work life and home life to remain completely separate, while Walt managed to get Skyler, and then the rest of his family, horribly entangled in the meth business. Mike's emotional stability has allowed him to retain an excellent relationship with his granddaughter Kaylee and daughter-in-law Stacey as well, while Walt is emotionally isolated from his family and manipulates them.
  • To Gus Fring. Both wear masks to get revenge, both put the goal over immediate gratification, and neither can stand shoddy workmanship, regardless of whatever else they're dealing with. They also both harbor hatred for Hector Salamanca because he threatened (in Mike's case) or killed (in Gus' case) a loved one of theirs. The main difference is Mike left whatever morals he had behind upon getting his revenge in a day rather than years before, and had to live dead inside afterward rather than messing up by dying to get it.
  • To Jimmy. Mike was devoted to his son, letting that loss shape his entire identity and set him down the road of getting revenge. Jimmy, on the other hand, has so many complicated feelings about Chuck's death, his own guilt about setting off events that caused it and the self-loathing/resentment brought on by Chuck treating him badly, that he just runs away. Mike sees right through the Saul Goodman mask and knows where this shit is coming from, but by Season 6 and into Breaking Bad, has lost all patience with him.
• Friend in the Black Market: "Fixer and Intermediary" is basically his job description and he lies at the heart of the connection map of relationships in the show. Being a former dirty cop, Gus middleman and scouting talents for Saul made Mike well known in the criminal underworld.
• Friend to All Children:
  • He looks annoyed when the Kettlemans blame their kids for money being outside the house and yell at them for it.
  • Completely subverted in Breaking Bad. It’s hard to call him a Friend to All Children considering he helped dissolve a child’s body in acid. He didn't kill the child himself to be fair but still. Plus, it’s not made clear whether or not part of the reason he aggressively warned Todd not to bring a gun to a job, without telling him, was partly due to the fact Todd just shot the child.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: He spent most of his career as a cop but the way he handles the sniper rifle in "Gloves Off" and his comments about it imply that he has a military background.
• Genius Bruiser: Mike's more than a simple thug. He's also a great investigator and tactician. He is also way sturdier than he looks and can beat up people half his age in seconds.
• Good Samaritan: Is actually a pretty amicable (if rather grouchy) person when left to his own devices, and stepped up to help Jimmy when the police tried to pinch him undeservedly — even going so far as to advise him on how to find the Kettlemans. Also walks Daniel, the out-of-his-depth white-collar criminal he is hired to escort, through how to deal with the drug traffickers instead of just watching him stutter through it and get screwed over like he could have done as just the bodyguard. Of course, this all stretches the term "good" a bit.
• Gone Horribly Right: Mike raised his son Matty to be a good, honest man so he can be someone better than the crooked cop he is. Unfortunately, Matty would go on to join the police force himself, and is so full of Incorruptible Pure Pureness that he refuses to take bribes like his father, and is shot dead by his partners due to their paranoia about him ratting them out.
• Guile Hero: Mike's trademark is using his surroundings and creative tactics to best his enemies.
  • His take on the situation at Duane Chow's warehouse in Full Measure best demonstrates this. He uses a bundle of balloons to fry the warehouse electrical system and get the drop on the cartel. He takes a hostage's shoe and uses it to imitate footsteps, luring out one of Chow's captors. When he sees Chow, he's putting his hands up and looking at a cartel member in Mike's blind spot, which Mike takes as a clue that someone is right behind the wall and watches Chow's raised hands to nonverbally estimate where his captor's head would be behind the wall.
  • Madrigal has him use a stuffed toy as a distraction so he can silently enter Chow's house.
  • In Winner, he forces Lalo to get off his tail by entering a paid parking lot, waiting for an incidental driver to exit, then cutting in front of him to the ticket machine and jamming it with gum and a gum wrapper. By the time Lalo forces the incidental out of the way, Mike's driven off without a trace.
• Hates Being Touched: The armbar Mike gives to Jimmy is provoked by little more than an aggressive poke, and he is visibly angry when the cop patted him on the shoulder.
• Heel Realization: Manuel Varga seems to get him to realize what he is right at the end of the Better Call Saul timeline. For all his compunctions concerning honor, his professionalism, and genuine desire to keep innocent people safe, he's still a killer who works for a ruthless drug kingpin, and his morals have degraded to the point where he is ultimately complicit in the capture and suicide of Nacho and covering up the murder of Howard Hamlin with little compunction. Manuel tells him that he's no better than the Salamancas, and Mike can't disagree. However, it seems like this realization just made Mike dig in harder, as the next time we see him in Breaking Bad, he's a much bigger Jerkass and doesn't seem to have any of the friction he had with Gus at first.
• Hitman with a Heart: Despite being Gus' ruthless right-hand, it doesn't make Mike any less sympathetic or emotional. Even though his job requires him to be a ruthless and methodical killing machine, he nevertheless does what he does to financially support his granddaughter. He also develops an affectionate father-son relationship with Jesse Pinkman, and consistently shows that he has a much better moral compass than Walt. All of this makes it exceptionally sad when Mike is forced to abandon his granddaughter and is needlessly murdered by Walt.
• Honor Among Thieves: He follows a strict set of rules for his conduct in the criminal world, making sure he stays honest to his word even if there's something to be gained from doing otherwise.
  • When Jimmy asks why he didn't or wouldn't just run off with the millions of dollars they stole from the Kettlemans for himself, Mike responds that it wasn't part of the job that was asked of him.
  • Later, Gus and Victor try to pay him for helping sabotage Hector's business, and he refuses since he believes they're already even by that point, making payment unnecessary.
• Honest Advisor: Always. Even if he does happen to dislike you. However, he'll be more inclined to break out the high-grade Brutal Honesty in that case.
• Hypocrite:
  • Early in Season 3, Mike advises Walt to use a full measure on Jesse in Season 3 when it seems like the kid is a liability that can't be resolved, and makes an entire speech explaining why doing this is better in the long-term. This is despite the fact that Mike himself constantly applies half-measures to situations when it would've been in his best interests to apply a full measure, such as when he adamantly refuses to kill his men when they become liabilities in Season 5, or to hold off on killing Lydia Rodarte-Quayle when she constantly acts erratically during their partnership. This is doubly ironic as he too would develop a deep bond with Jesse like Walt, despite him being the one who ordered him to kill Jesse in the first place. Better Call Saul further establishes that Mike had been constantly using half-measures for a lot longer than he implied he did in his speech to Walter.
  • Mike will frequently insult people for actions he's either taken in the past or been forced to do himself.
  • Mike despite not liking the deaths of innocent people, regularly works with people who are responsible for their deaths.
• Hypocrite Has a Point:
  • The men Mike was protecting were people that did their job and got arrested for it, Jesse was trying to kill people that technically are his co-workers out of revenge. We do see that Mike will kill his own men if they start murdering each other so while he can't judge Walter for getting rid of Jesse after personally knowing the latter he still raises a valid point.
  • Mike might not have any moral high ground in saying that maybe Jesse’s loyalty towards Walt (while admirable) is misplaced, while trying to win Jesse over to Gus’ (who originally wanted Jesse dead) side. But given that Walt manipulates and belittles Jesse constantly, causing him a lot of pain, Mike’s point isn’t entirely wrong. Plus, towards the end, Walt continuously tries his hardest to manipulate Jesse into staying by him, no matter how much it hurts his protégé. Whereas Mike ultimately realizes that Jesse should decide what’s best for himself, and only he (Jesse) can decide that.
• Iconic Sequel Character: One of the universe's most iconic characters, he doesn't appear until the very end of Breaking Bad Season 2.
• Ignored Expert:
  • If Saul had listened to him that going after Walt was a bad idea, and wasn't obsessed with distracting himself from trauma with money and the deluded idea that he could both control the guy and get the love he never got from his brother, then a lot of shit in Breaking Bad could have been avoided.
  • Back in BCS Season 4, he knows full well that Jimmy going deeper into scamming is a response to his brother's death, and tells him to quit while he's ahead. Of course Jimmy doesn't, and he's still sulking about what Mike said a season later.
• Improbable Weapon User: Mike manages to weaponize balloons from a party with his granddaughter, letting them go so that they fly into a set of power lines and knock out the power of the compound he's infiltrating.
• It's Personal: There is no real reason why he would want to survey and plan to attack the Cartel other than Hector threatening his family. Everything is said and done and Mike has $50,000, but he won't let that slide.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Threatens Saul with this when he refuses to give him Jesse's location.
  Mike: Don't make me beat you 'till your legs don't work.
• Jack of All Trades: Once he starts doing dirty business, Mike does everything from muscle to sniping to infiltrations.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Even at his grumpiest and lowest point, especially come Breaking Bad, Mike always looks out for his family’s and colleagues best interests. Despite his sour exterior, there’s still some of pop-pop still in Mike, not just limited to his family either. He goes the extra mile to make sure his colleagues and people working under him are well provided for. As long as you haven't already gotten on his bad side, he's also a fairly pleasant person to be around when off the clock.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Before Better Call Saul starts, he was a police officer in Philadelphia. He was a dirty cop, taking money from some of the more successful criminals that were arrested by his department, but everyone in his department did it, and Mike would probably have been killed if he didn't partake, so being crooked was about self-preservation as much as greed. He starts down a darker path after his son is killed, murdering the two cops responsible and fleeing to New Mexico. Once there, he starts doing bodyguard work for drug deals, nearly accepts an assassination job, robs a cartel truck of a quarter million dollars, and eventually starts working for a meth kingpin. Still, he does have some lines he won't cross, is frequently uncomfortable with the work he does, and occasionally outright antagonizes Gus over his more ruthless actions and orders. He strikes up friendships with Jimmy and Werner, tries to be genuinely helpful and insightful with Wormald (although it doesn't take), and even does volunteer work with his daughter's support group. By Breaking Bad, he's lost almost all his redeemable qualities, fully entrenched into his Jerkass persona. He's pretty much completely loyal to Gus no matter how ruthless he is (about the closest we get is Mike looking mildly shocked when Gus slits Victor's throat), thinks nothing of killing anyone who gets in his way, and won't hesitate to use threats and violence to get what he wants. His only concern is making money and being able to pass it along to his granddaughter. Even Saul, who he was friends with previously, is someone who he now mostly just tolerates for his connections. We get a couple glimpses of the previous Mike (trying to convince Walter to not attempt to protect Jesse when he became a liability, trying to get Jesse away from Walter when it became clear a partnership with him could only end badly), and he still tries to spare innocents, but there's not much left outside of a cold blooded killer.
• Karmic Death: Mike had several occasions where he came really close to killing Walter, but because of the circumstances, he couldn’t do it. But when Mike is forced to leave the city after the DEA finds solid proof to arrest him, he is killed by Walter after giving him one last rant. His death is also poetic in the way that Mike didn’t follow his own advice about ”taking full measures instead of half measures”. Mike only did half measures on Walter (threatening him), and Walter did a full measure on Mike (killing him). However, despite all of this, it is made clear that Mike was one of the least deserving men to die, and even Walter himself quickly regrets it and tries to apologize, but Mike just brushes him off.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When he rescues Chow from the cartel hitmen, Mike shoots Chow in the hand as a penalty for not informing Gus about the situation.
  • Mike rarely loses his cool, so to see him yell at his granddaughter for reminding him of his son's profession and untimely death was a real gut punch.
  • His threat to break Saul's legs and leave him in a hole in the desert if he doesn't give him Jesse Pinkman retroactively becomes this in light of the prequel series. The desert is implied to be a particular sore spot for Saul after having watched Tuco Salamanca gruesomely break some skater's legs in front of him after a scam gone wrong and suffered PTSD from having to watch a shoot out, both of which Mike is aware of.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Stops doing business with Daniel after Daniel shows up for a meet in a flashy Hummer, Mike knowing full well that it's only a matter of time before Daniel attracts the attention of the cops.
• Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy: Saul admits that Mike has even more connections than himself, explaining to Walt that Mike gives Saul most of his connections and planning a hit on Gus would be an "epic fail" because it would go through Mike first, and trying to find a hitman without going through Mike risks encountering undercover cops. In the fifth season, Mike is easily able to cover distribution for a meth operation without a question from Walter, Jesse, or Saul.
• Lawman Gone Bad: His backstory involving his Start of Darkness and Noodle Incident. The death of his son may have had to do with it.
• Made of Iron: For a guy his age he sure can take a beating, as seen during his ploy to get Tuco arrested.
• Manly Tears: When discussing the conversation he had with his deceased son that revealed how the former wasn't the hero the latter thought he was.
• Moral Myopia:
  • A frequent coping mechanism he employs. Mike will do what he has to do, but likes to make excuses for his more dishonorable acts and will frequently insult people for actions he's either taken in the past or been forced to do himself. For example, in Better Call Saul, he tells Manuel Varga that the Salamanca's are dogs who will pay for Nacho's death. Manuel retorts that Mike is part of plan that resulted in Nacho's death and will continue to make excuses for the horrible things he's done. His lack of a response seems to imply a Heel Realization, which explains his more curt attitude come Breaking Bad.
  • Even in Breaking Bad, he still seems to have this mentality, as he has a tendency to preach about “doing the right thing” when he regularly commits crimes as Gus’ enforcer. Most notably when he visits Walt regarding Jesse attempting to kill the two drug dealers who caused Combo’s death, as well as a child’s death shortly afterwards, saying that half-measures shouldn’t be used with Jesse, ignoring of the fact that they were using children as their gunman.
  • Another example is while Mike was starting to get along with Jesse, and sees that Jesse does have genuine loyalty, he suggests that maybe he has it to the wrong person. While Mike might not be entirely wrong in Walt not deserving Jesse’s loyalty, Mike did conveniently forget that he and Gus originally planned to get rid of Jesse the season before, whereas Walt saved Jesse’s life from their attempt.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction when he learns about what happened to an innocent person after his heist on a Salamanca drug truck.
• Moment of Weakness: The badass One-Man Army that is Mike Ehrmantraut is taken down by a single gut shot by a noncombatant just because Walt manages to catch him by surprise.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: At the start, he would rather not kill bystanders or even relatively harmless cartel members if he has to. Backfires when Hector shoots the good Samaritan who untied said member. His partnership with Gus compromises him into killing some relatively harmless people like Ziegler but he will draw the line at targeting innocent family members.
• Nerves of Steel: He is one of the few people who isn't intimidated by the likes of Gus Fring or the Salamanca family. Next to those people, storming a compound guarded by multiple gangbangers seems almost boring to Mike. Being a broken, bitter old man with nothing to lose might have something to do with his attitude.
• Noble Demon: He's a criminal but he has a strict code against hurting innocent bystanders and he is extremely loyal to his bosses and employees, believing firmly in keeping his word.
• Noble Top Enforcer: Is the right-hand man of Gus and is one of the more honorable and less "evil" mobsters in the game (certainly less evil than his boss) and his ultimate goal is just to financially secure his granddaughter's future.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • In "Say My Name" Mike absolutely refuses to let Jesse deliver his money as he grew to like the kid and doesn't want him in trouble with the authorities. This leads to Walt delivering the money instead and murdering Mike when he refuses to trade the names of his men for the cash.
  • He wanted to avoid killing during the heist of Hector's money (and attempt to have cops put the squeeze on him). It ends up with a Good Samaritan helping the driver and Hector shooting said Samaritan for his trouble.
• Noodle Incident: His career as a Philadelphia police officer ended under "dramatic" circumstances. Mike doesn't want to talk about it, and Hank isn't really interested in it either because he's more interested in knowing why Gus Fring would hire someone like Mike to run his corporate security since doing background checks on pimple-faced fry cooks seems like overkill in Hank's book. There's some evidence from Better Call Saul that implies that the circumstances in question were in fact the death of his son, Matthew.
• Not So Stoic: There are a few times where Mike has been pushed far enough to react with real rage. Like when Walt killed Gus and he prematurely checked himself out of the makeshift Mexican hospital to race back to New Mexico to kill Walt, or when Walt followed him to a bar and asked him to kill Gus. Walt just has this knack for getting under his skin more than anybody else. He is also genuinely scared when Gus slits Victor's throat out of nowhere to the point he points his gun at Gus on reflex.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • He pretends to be falling-down drunk to get the corrupt cops who killed his son off guard and make sure it was really them before he kills them. He may have been planning the murder for months beforehand as well.
  • When baiting Tuco into a fight, he acts the part of a doddering old guy who seems totally ignorant to "accidentally" hitting Tuco's car.
• Odd Friendship: Mike and Jesse. When they first met, and for a while, neither of them were particularly fond of each other, and Mike even was prepared to kill him on more than one occasion. When Jesse protects Mike in Shotgun, Mike instantly warms up to Jesse, and they are more comfortable around each other. Mike constantly gives Jesse advice, and almost treats him more like he was his own son.
• Older Sidekick: Gus isn't exactly young but Mike is clearly much older.
• Old Master: He has worked on both sides of the law and lived long enough to have a granddaughter, which means he knows how to casually overcome most threats that would kill people a third his age. He is a master investigator, negotiator, clean-up guy, assassin, sniper, burglar, infiltrator, instigator, tracker, reverse-tracker, and has a bunch of other skills that make him a high-level criminal. The saying "Beware of an old man in a profession where men die young" fits him perfectly.
  • Two current (and much, much younger) cops try to enlist his experience to help them put pressure on Jimmy to put pressure on Nacho. Turns out he's even better at the job than they bargained for when the very experience they hoped to use shoots them down for being too narrow-focused to see the big picture, once he gets hold of more than just their synopsis.
  • He later walks the clueless Daniel Wormald through the criminal side of the street with a master class performance as a bodyguard and a mentor. It's very clear that Mike knows all the moves for both sides of the law, forwards and backward.
  • He casually dusts off his background knowledge in tailing and stakeout skills to great effect when figuring out exactly how Hector's operation works. It doesn't take him all that long, and he makes it look depressingly easy, despite the (complacent) precautions the cartel tries to take.
  • In both of his interactions with Lawson, the Consummate Professional gun dealer, he makes it abundantly clear that, unlike Walt, Lawson has nothing to teach him when it comes to picking the right gun for a given job. There's a strong implication that his knowledge and skills stem from being a marine sniper in The Vietnam War.
  • When he realizes that he's been bugged, he meticulously uses a gambit that allows him to turn the tables so that he is the one tracking them. Explained in detail here.
• One-Man Army: A realistic take on this. Mike has on several occasions dispatched large groups of heavily armed criminals single-handedly. He relies on ambush since he stands little chance in direct confrontation at his age.
• Only Sane Man: Clearly convinced he is, always acting professionally on the job and irritated when someone acts out of line such as Walt and his eccentric problem-solving solutions. He would qualify for this trope, if he didn't let his temper get the better of him where Walt was concerned.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Gus' method of killing Victor is so sudden and so brutal that Mike actually raises his gun on instinct before he realizes what is going on.
  • Mike is usually one of the most cool-headed characters on the show, but when he's warned that his lawyer ratted him out and sees the cops show up at the park looking for him, his reaction, while subdued, serves to illustrate the gravity of the situation. Mike, almost always The Unfettered, looks downright terrified.
  • When he gets a call from Stacey at work, he waves a car past his parking booth so he can focus on the call. Anyone who's been watching the show up to the point knows that's a big sign of how much he cares about his family.
  • When he realizes that someone has been following him and has left a "don't" note on his car, he looks freaked out.
  • Mike losing his cool is a surefire sign that things are getting out of control.
  • When Gus orders Tyrus to bring Nacho's dad as leverage Mike gets in the way of the door and simply says no with a choked up voice.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Jonathan Banks considers the moment where Mike abandons his granddaughter at the playground to escape the police to be something Mike never would have done, but didn't protest out of respect for the writers and producers. He also found the end of the train heist, and Mike's lack of reaction to Todd killing Drew Sharp, as out-of-character.
• Papa Wolf: What he tried to do for Matty was pure, unadulterated Wolf. As was what he did after his son's death. How those guys stayed in one spot when he let his expression change is anybody's guess. Running for the hills and/or needing brown trousers would have been more common reactions. Pro-tip: hands off his daughter-in-law and granddaughter.
• Parental Substitute: To Nacho, Jesse and Jimmy. The last is a very Tough Love version, but he was a little fond of the guy, and even when Jimmy is Saul and Mike is tempted to kick his skull in, he’ll keep Saul out of the Gus and Salamanca loop to protect him so he doesn’t have a trauma Freak Out. (Though he’ll press the desert Trauma Button if needed.)
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Shooting the two Dirty Cop partners that killed his son.
  • Reving up the drill to torment Chuck.
  • Mike ends up nearly killing Walt on Gus' orders, Walt was willing to have someone like Gale murdered at this point.
  • Strangling Gaff to death and nicking Don Eladio's necklace. Both men were remorseless criminals, with Gaff in particular being responsible for the similarly brutal death of two Los Pollos guards.
  • Threatening Lydia.
• Perpetual Frowner: Anytime he's not with his granddaughter, his default expression is a weary scowl that rarely ever leaves his face.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Reporting the Good Samaritan's body to the police so that the family can have closure.
  • While he's polite to his face, and doesn't take the disparaging bait Jimmy sets out for him, word of god is that he doesn't like Chuck because he treats his brother badly and revs his drill just a bit more than is required to torment him.
  • Upon learning that Lalo is coming to interrogate Jimmy, Mike wastes no time rushing over to save him. This is after Gus tells him under no circumstances is Lalo to be harmed in America, yet Mike's willing to defy that for his friend anyway. Something similar happens when Kim tells him that Jimmy is being held hostage by Lalo (or so she thinks), Mike doesn't particularly like either of them by this point, but he's visibly alarmed and goes off to rescue him. He also tries his best to calm Kim down gently.
  • He might be willing to let Nacho die, but he will absolutely not tolerate Gus going after his innocent father. He even makes a promise to Nacho to take on whomever Gus may send to harm him.
  • An attempt to do this with Jimmy backfires badly, as he tells Kim that Lalo is alive, thinking she can handle it better. She really can't, keeping it to herself because she's having too much fun with the scam, and it sets off Disaster Dominoes.
• Pragmatic Villainy: "Half Measures", he doesn't go through with Walt's plan to have Jesse thrown in jail because it would've upset Gus. He's also much more efficient than the cartel, which makes a point of being as vicious as possible.
• Private Detective: His "official" position on the Los Pollos Hermanos payroll, which is what he is meant to say if the police think he's involved in Gus' drug network.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Mike is the deuteragonist of Better Call Saul, and it's as much a journey of Mike going from a vengeful ex-cop doing side business to support his family to Gus's chief enforcer, as much as Jimmy's transformation into Saul.
• Put on a Bus: After he's shot in Mexico by Joaquin, it's stated he'll have to stay at the medical tent Gus had set up to recover for at least a week. This cleverly allowed the writers to take out his boss while leaving Mike alive to return in the following season premiere.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Walt during their last encounter.
  Mike: We had a good thing, you stupid son of a bitch! We had Fring, we had a lab, we had everything we needed, and it all ran like clockwork! You could have shut your mouth, cooked, and made as much money as you ever needed! It was perfect! But no! You just had to blow it up! You, and your pride and your ego! You just had to be the man! If you’d done your job and known your place, we’d all be fine right now.
• Relative Button:
  • Harm his family, and he returns the favor in kind.
  • When his family needs money, the first thing he does is to contact the criminally-connected veterinarian.
• Replacement Goldfish: He believes he failed with his son, so tries to do right by Nacho and is visibly upset when he kills himself, and does better with Jesse.
• Retirony: Is just about to skip town and presumably retire from the criminal life forever when Walt caps him.
• Revenge Before Reason: Hector already forgot about what Mike did to him and moved on, but Mike refuses to forget that he threatened his family. His actions indirectly got a Good Samaritan killed by Hector.
• Rules Lawyer:
  • You're not getting past his booth without the appropriate number of validation stickers or cash. Unless his daughter-in-law is on the phone, that is.
  • If you're buying drugs from his employer, you also better make sure you have every penny you promised, otherwise no deal.
• Sacrificial Lion: Walt kills him simply because Mike refuses to give him information, but mostly because Mike insulted him. Mike's death signals how just far Walt has fallen. It's the first time in the series he kills someone without any kind of legitimate justification.
• Saved by Canon: He is a major character until "Say My Name" in Breaking Bad so there's no chance of him dying in Better Call Saul despite similar brushes with death to Gus'.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!:
  • He could have run off with the Kettlemans' money, either all of it or splitting it with Jimmy, and probably would have been happy to do so if Jimmy had wanted to. That wasn't why Jimmy hired him, though, and as Mike himself says when you agree to do a job, you keep your word.
  • He also returns some of Nacho's payment to him after his plan to get rid of Tuco does not work as well as he had expected.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: With Jimmy/Saul. Mike is a stoic Grumpy Old Man who dresses sensibly, is very professional and has no time for nonsense, while in both versions of himself, Jimmy is a flamboyant dresser, way in over his head, and a manchild very Prone to Tears.
• Seen It All: The kinds of stuff that send normal people or even criminals into a panic? Mike has probably seen, or likely committed them before. The only events in the series that shock him are Walt putting out the hit on Gale, Gus cutting Victor's throat, and Gus' death.
• Self-Serving Memory: His loyalty to Gus has skewed his perception of certain pivotal events that Gus was responsible for.
  • Mike blames Walt for Gus' death and their business relationship deteriorating and calls him out on wanting to "be the man" and turning on Gus out of his pride and ego. In actuality, Gus was arguably the one who turned on Walt: Jesse protested Gus' dealers using a child to conduct business, Walt ended up killing them to stop them from killing Jesse, and then Gus ordered Walt and Jesse killed, and Mike was the one who almost carried it out. He's also forgetting that Gus was going to have Hank killed and warned Walt that he'd have his entire family killed too if he tried to intervene (though Mike may not have been aware of that, since he was in Mexico at the time). While Mike is likely thinking about how Walt had been trying to kill Gus throughout Season 4 and even tried to turn Mike against him, the season began with Gus killing Victor in a clear warning to all three of them, and Gus spent the season grooming Jesse to replace Walt, and both Walt and Mike knew it.
  • "Fun and Games" is another drop of morality for him, as he tries to console Mr. Varga that the Salamancas will pay for what they did to Nacho. This is cruel irony, as the Salamancas did nothing to Nacho, wholeheartedly trusting him due to being unaware of his deception, until Lalo's assassination — an assassination that Nacho was forced by Gus to participate in. It was Gus who had enslaved Nacho and caused most of his misfortunes, including his ultimately being targeted by the Salamancas.
• Shoot the Dog: When he kills Werner for becoming a liability. Werner would have been killed regardless by Gus, Mike only does the deed to make his death quick and ensure his wife's safety. This sets up Mike for later on pointing a gun towards Walt's head in "Full Measure", both men in similar circumstances, but this time Mike showed no hesitation or remorse before Walt turned the tables on him.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Quite literally "shoot" in this case. All the money Mike was saving up for his granddaughter? All of it is seized the moment he gets implicated. His decision not to give the names of his locked-up men to Walt? Walt makes it known that, after shooting him, he plans to get the names from Lydia anyway.
• Start of Darkness:
  • Described to Walt in "Half Measures". Mike used to be a cop. He once gave a repeatedly abusive husband an intimidating warning rather than killing him. Later on, the man beat his wife to death, and that's when Mike decided to never take a half measure again.
  • Five-O goes more into depth about the loss of his son to corrupt cops fundamentally broke Mike at his core.
• Stealth Mentor: More than once Mike gives solid advice to the hapless criminals he works with on how to be better at what they do.
• The Stoic: Mike's too world-weary to get worked up over anything. He reacts to most problems with mild irritation and exasperation.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Walt after Gus' death. Mike can barely conceal his contempt for him.
  • While he's often annoyed by Jimmy he does have some affection for the guy but he barely tolerates working with/for Saul Goodman.
• This Is Unforgivable!: The Salamancas threatening his family is a hard pill for him to swallow.
• Title Drop: For "Half Measures", he drops the title in his famous speech to Walt.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A retroactive example. Mike, as depicted in Breaking Bad, is mostly a pitiless, thuggish monster despite some standards and the love he has for his family. For the entirety of Better Call Saul, he is much more of a conflicted, empathetic person despite being a hardened criminal willing to be ruthless when forced into a corner. Compare his gentle approach to calming a traumatized Jimmy, who was just in the middle of a gunfight he almost got killed in, to him slapping a despondent Jesse, who just witnessed Jane's corpse, into getting his attention. Although many fans long chalked this up to a case of Characterization Marches On, his final scene in the latter series suggests he took Manuel's words to heart and embraced his lot in life as a mere gangster with no genuinely meaningful ethics. Lending credibility to this, the first time we see him in the Breaking Bad timeline in Better Call Saul, his personality is perfectly in line with his characterization in the former series, being very ill-tempered and threatening to cave Saul's skull in for joking with him.
• Tough Love: He actually does have some affection for Jimmy, and quite a bit of sympathy, but he also realizes just how fake everything about the guy is (which gets worse as he becomes Saul, which Mike knows is a response to Chuck), so Jimmy will barely get an inch from Mike.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mike takes Pimento cheese sandwiches along to stakeouts and drug deals.
• Tragic Villain: A former cop who went dirty and accidentally dragged his son down with him, resulting in his son being killed. Holding himself responsible, Mike takes on a life of crime to provide for his widowed daughter-in-law and granddaughter in place of his late son, gradually losing his morals and becoming a more ruthless threat in the criminal underworld. The most tragic part? After Walt kills him, Mike's money is seized by the government, meaning that his granddaughter will never get the money that he sacrificed so much of his humanity for.
• Trauma Conga Line: In Season 5A of Breaking Bad:
  • He gets shot during the escape from the cartels' base and has to be hospitalized for a week.
  • While he's in recovery, his boss gets killed and he loses his relatively comfortable job.
  • His boss's slush funds are seized, meaning both the two million dollar inheritance he left for his granddaughter and the hazard pay to buy off his nine incarcerated men are gone.
  • He is forced to go against his better judgment and work with Walt, whom he regards as a ticking time bomb.
  • Pressure from the DEA forces him to retire with a five million dollar buyout (sounds like a lot to a normal person, but not so much when you've got nine guys to pay off).
  • The DEA busts his lawyer and seizes his money again, and now he has no way of paying off his men or supporting his granddaughter.
  • His lawyer tricks him into revealing his present location, a playground he took his granddaughter to, to the police. Mike has to exit his granddaughter's life without saying goodbye.
  • When he finally tells Walt exactly what he thinks of him and explains how he is responsible for basically ruining his life, he is fatally shot by Walter.
  • Mike accepts his death and watches peacefully at the sunset, but Walt has to ruin the moment by reminding Mike that his guys are all going to be killed anyway.
  • Even in death, Mike can't catch a break. His body is implied to be chemically disincorporated by Walt and Todd.
• Underestimating Badassery: As mentioned, he has a bad habit of repeatedly underestimating the savviness of Walt, which ends up being his downfall.
• Undying Loyalty: To Gustavo Fring. However, after Gustavo dies, he's still willing to work with Walt and Jesse in order to provide for his granddaughter. He makes it very clear that he's unhappy about the situation.
• The Unfettered: When Gus attempts to intimidate Mike for his involvement with Nacho's actions against Hector, Mike isn't even a bit phased when Gus raises his voice in front of Gus' goons. Instead, he tells Gus to cut the bullshit and get to the real reason why Gus invited Mike to their meeting place.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Gus implies that Mike is this regarding hurting Hector after Hector paid him off therefore no longer thinking about harming Mike's family. Mike, however, smoothly defends himself by asserting that Hector's attempted murder was justified after he killed a Good Samaritan who wasn't in the game. Played straighter when he's unwilling to return Jimmy's favor while he pretty much forces him to do things for him.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • His "half measure" speech to Walt is something the latter ends up taking to heart, with Walt eventually becoming as ruthless as Gus or the Cartel, and leaving a long trail of bodies behind him in the process, Mike included.
  • He genuinely meant well in telling Jimmy who was deep in PTSD that one day he might not think about what's happened to him, and telling Kim she's made of sterner stuff than her husband, but it plays into their fatal flaws of Jimmy putting his head in the sand and Kim thinking she can deal with everything on her own, leading to their break-up and becoming hollow shells of their former selves.
• The Vietnam Vet: Not heavily emphasized, but his familiarity with the M40 sniper rifle and complaints about the wood stock it came with in the past strongly imply he served as a Marine sniper during the war.
  Mike: Wood, warped like hell. You get it wet, you put it in the sun, gone. Somebody probably should've figured that out before they sent it into a damn jungle.
• Villain Protagonist: In Better Call Saul, as the deuteragonist. Unlike Jimmy, who has yet to become a full-on Amoral Attorney, Mike is a full-on criminal, albeit one who starts out avoiding violence when he can. He has his endearing moments though. As the series goes on, he is shown becoming Gus' hitman and his hesitation to use violence is gone, although he still tries to go out of his way to avoid hurting innocent people.
• Villain Respect: He goes from assuming Kim is some nervous little wife who'll call the cops when her husband hasn't come home, to telling her about Lalo being alive because he heard her telling the cartel leader to get out of her house, and thinks she's made of sterner stuff than Jimmy.
• Villainous BSoD: He drinks himself stupid to cope with his guilt in killing Werner Ziegler.
• Villain Has a Point: Sums up Walt more accurately than even he could have guessed:
  Mike: "You...are trouble. [leans forward] I'm sorry the kid doesn't see it, but I sure as hell do. You are a time bomb, tick-tick-ticking. And I have no intention of being around for the boom."
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Jimmy. Jimmy has his "needing approval from a Chuck replacement" deal, and Mike considers Jimmy an annoying insect, but has a little affection and sympathy for him. He sees more of Jimmy's potential than Jimmy does. He likes Saul far less, having got an innocent man killed with his wife, but will still keep him out of the loop for his own sake.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • To Walt of all people, although it's more like We Could Have Been Friends. In their earlier interactions, Mike is noticeably soft towards Walt, almost like he genuinely wants to reach out and get to know the guy better. Walt, however, doesn't reciprocate and coldly shuts down any of Mike's attempts to be friendly. Post-Season 3, any and all chances of Mike and Walt getting closer have gone out the window, and the two men demonstrate nothing but mutual disdain for each other. During the S3 interviews, Jonathan Banks outright states that Mike "has a soft spot for Walter and doesn't want to see him drown", and that Walt's impulsively honorable decision to pick Jesse over Gustavo is what changes the whole situation drastically.
  • To Saul as well. As revealed in the prequel series, Mike used to put his loyalty to Jimmy above his loyalty to Gus, even going as far as potentially defying Gustavo's orders to save Jimmy. He also mentors Jimmy on dealing with trauma as best he can, with Jimmy noting that Mike is the only person he can talk to about this stuff. Come the original series, and Mike has no problem threatening to break Saul's legs, or pressing his Trauma Button by threatening to bury him out in the desert just so he can follow Fring's orders to the letter. While they still work together, it's clear that the relationship between them is purely professional now. It's hinted that Mike, who has known Saul since he was a promising young lawyer, disdains the sleazebag Ambulance Chaser that Jimmy gradually became as well as his petty criminal schemes, which ultimately got an innocent killed and gave Mike a major headache dealing with the aftermath. Gordon Smith confirmed this; Mike was disappointed that Jimmy became hellbent on proving Chuck right about him.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Tells Walt all about his "half measure" of scaring the piss out of a Domestic Abuser, and that guy killing his wife made him realize he can never do a half measure again. There's also the subtext of him trying to get Jesse away from Walt. Thirdly, his anger at Jimmy turning into Saul because Mike knows Jimmy is attempting to prove his brother right about him, while on top of that seeking out Walt partly out of wanting to recreate his dynamic with Chuck, when Mike explicitly told him not to chase.
• Would Hit a Girl: Mike is perfectly intent on killing Lydia when he threatens her at her house in "Madrigal". He only doesn't because Lydia's love for her daughter hits home given his own relationship with his granddaughter.
• Would Hurt a Child: Implied when Lydia doesn't stop hysterically squealing with her oblivious daughter in the vicinity. It's clear he doesn't want to do it...but also clear that he will do it if need be. While he hasn't hurt a child himself on screen, he doesn't berate Gus or Todd for doing so.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Is genuinely disappointed in Jimmy for running and hiding into another persona, and sees more of his potential than actually Jimmy does. Not that he ever really told the other man this, who might have done better if he'd heard it.
• You Are What You Hate: In "Five-O", Mike kills a pair of crooked cops; the cops had killed his only son because they were paranoid his son might expose their crimes. Later on, Mike is forced to kill Werner, a relatively innocent man because he implicated himself and will expose Gus' secrets. The realization of this sends Mike into an alcoholic BSOD.
  • He is confronted with this further in Season 6 of Better Call Saul. Despite continuing to try and maintain a moral standard, he is still ultimately complicit in the capture of Nacho and his eventual suicide and the cover-up of Howard's murder. Despite being openly disgusted with both, he continues to serve Gus willingly, and his attempt to soothe his own guilt by assuring Nacho's father Manuel that the Salamancas will pay for it are ultimately thrown in his face, with Manuel bluntly telling him he's no better than the gangsters he hates. It's all but stated from his harrowing facial expression after Manuel leaves that this is where Mike became the ruthless asshole he is in Breaking Bad.
• You Can't Fight Fate: With a little self-justifying in there, this is his view, as you make a choice that puts you on a road, and no matter what you do to try and get off, you’ll be right there again.

Tyrus Kitt

Tyrus Kitt

"It's all clear."

^{As he appears in Better Call Saul} "Gotta make it look real."

Portrayed By: Ray Campbell

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul

"You've been out of commission four days. Think we're gonna shut down the whole operation just for you?"

Tyrus Kitt is a prominent enforcer of Gustavo Fring, hired as a replacement for Victor when it comes to checking the meth. Better Call Saul establishes he was already working for Gus with Victor by the start of Breaking Bad.

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• Asshole Victim: Given both his actions and attitude, no one mourns him when Walt and Hector blow him to smithereens.
• Bald of Evil: Has a shaved head, like many of the enforcers working for Gus.
• The Brute: Together with Victor, he serves as the muscle for Gus's operations.
• Bullying a Dragon: When Nacho is on the run, he immediately turns to violence against Mike when he demonstrates belligerence toward Gus over his orders to kidnap Manuel Varga. Mike himself warns Tyrus it's not going to go the way he think it will before the situation defuses.
• Co-Dragons: Better Call Saul shows that Victor and Tyrus were Gus' main muscles, as they're shown providing backup for Gus during his first encounter with Mike. Victor tends to handle the vehicles and Tyrus commands Gus' mooks.
• Cold Sniper: Not shown onscreen doing it, but it's possible. When Mike is briefing Gus about the security arrangements before the cartel's men show up, he mentions that Tyrus has been stationed in the treeline with a Barrett .50 rifle since the previous night in case any scouts showed up early.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's a rather sarcastic and unpleasant man.
  Tyrus: Forgot how to count?
• Divergent Character Evolution: He's first introduced as a simple replacement for Victor in Breaking Bad. Now seen working alongside him in Better Call Saul, Tyrus is shown having a leadership position for Madrigal's security team and other thugs. The most noticeable difference between him and Victor is that he's more likely to butt heads with Mike and sometimes questions Gus.
• Evil Is Petty: Tells Walt the laundry doesn't have to be dirty - but was perfectly willing to have him travel to work covered in it.
• Failed a Spot Check: Sent into Casa Tranquila ahead to make sure it's safe, he fails to notice the bomb strapped to Hector's wheelchair but only after Walt snuck in, placing said bomb to Hector's wheelchair, resulting in the deaths of both him and Gus. Tyrus had previusly scanned the room prior with a radar detector.
• Hidden Depths: When Mike asks if he needs to write his list of suggestions for Werner's crew, Tyrus says he has a good enough memory. He also seems to see little joy in Nacho's situation during Season 6, unlike Victor.
• Honest Advisor: Tells Gus it's better if he kills Hector for snitching instead of Gus. If only Gus had listened.
• Jerkass: Unlike his boss or Nacho, Tyrus seems to take overtly sadistic pleasure in being a dick to absolutely everyone who's either on or below his pay grade. He nearly stops Nacho from getting the extra lot for Hector in a blunt manner and is otherwise just kind of a prick to almost everyone except Gus. To be fair, Hector is being an outright Troll by demanding the extra cut just for the sake of pissing off Gus. Later on, when staging a False Flag Operation, after Victor shoots Nacho as part of the act, Tyrus smugly claims "gotta make it look real," before dropping a cellphone onto the sand right in front of him. Sure, a lot of the nasty things Tyrus does can be chalked up to "just doing his job", but his not even extending his hand to pass Jesse a phone and instead making him pull it from his hand places him firmly under this trope. You always get the impression he'd rather shoot you than talk to you.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Walter confronts Tyrus on somebody else cooking in the lab, Tyrus points out that Walter has been out of commission for 4 days, and they are on a work schedule. Considering Walt was out of commission because of a fight he himself started, Tyrus’ point has some validity.
• Limited Wardrobe: He's almost always seen sporting a black leather jacket.
• Ludicrous Gibs: He is blown up along with Gus in Hector's Suicide Attack.
• Mook Lieutenant: Alongside Mike, Tyrus is in charge of handling where Gus' enforcers go and what to do.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: "The Guy For This" is the one time he almost outright defies his boss, instinctively going to shut down the dead drops before Gus decides that the dead drops remain.
• Pet the Dog: Nasty guy he is, he gets a couple fluffy moments during the Season 4 finale:
  • Smiles kindly at the old lady in the nursing home
  • He offers to risk public detection by killing Hector himself.
• Punch-Clock Villain: As nasty as he is, he signed up for cash. When Gus takes some serious risks with the safety of everyone in his organization, Tyrus displays some incredible skepticism toward the orders of his boss.
• The Quiet One: Even more taciturn than Mike or Gus, which is saying something. Often, he refuses to reply or relay information just to be a dick to Walt.
• Replacement Goldfish: He's Gus' replacement for Victor.
• Revision: Better Call Saul shows that he and Victor used to be Co-Dragons for Gus before Mike entered the picture, as opposed to the implication in Breaking Bad that he was brought in as a replacement for Victor on Mike's recommendations.
• Saved by Canon: In Better Call Saul, it'll be several years before his eventual death by Héctor Salamanca's explosive device.
• Scary Black Man: Tyrus does a very good job when it comes to looming, and he manages to unnerve Walt the second he arrives.
• Smug Smiler: Everything Tyrus does, from taking Walt with a cattle prod to sending ladies on a bus back to Honduras, he does with the smuggest smirk on his face.
• The Sociopath: This is clearly why Gus hired him. He obviously enjoys being antisocial and petty to everyone he's allowed to be, and doesn't have a shred of empathy or basic people skills.
• The Stoic: He never shows any emotions and always has his poker face on. Which serves to make him even more intimidating.
• Would Hit a Girl: Would send ladies on a bus trip to Honduras under Gus' orders.

Victor

Victor

"One hour. You in or out?"

^{As he appears in Better Call Saul} "Do it quick, before you pass out!"

Portrayed By: Jeremiah Bitsui

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul

"Simple, complicated, it doesn't matter. The steps never change, and I know every step."

Victor is a prominent enforcer of Gus', alongside Mike Ehrmantraut. He could effectively be described as Gus' left-hand man.

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• Asshole Victim: Considering what a sadistic asshole he was, it's hard to feel bad when Gus slits his throat and lets him choke to death on his own blood.
• Bald of Evil: Like a lot of Fring's goons, he has a shaved head.
• Blofeld Ploy: Ends up on the receiving end of this in the season 4 premiere, where he ends up getting brutally murdered by Gus when he earlier implied that he was going to murder Walt and Jesse instead.
• The Brute: Gus' most trusted henchman, alongside Mike and Tyrus.
• Characterization Marches On: Breaking Bad has Victor act relatively stoic and professional, expressing very little personality up to the moment Gale dies. By contrast, Better Call Saul depicts Victor as having a sadistic streak, taking joy in harming Nacho Varga and gleefully smiling when he ultimately kills himself.
• A Death in the Limelight: In "Box Cutter", he speaks more than in all his other Breaking Bad appearances combined. He's dead by the end of the episode, his throat slashed by Gustavo to be made an example of to Walt and Jesse.
• Didn't See That Coming: Needless to say, he did not expect to be made an example of by Gus.
• Divergent Character Evolution: In Better Call Saul, he is portrayed as having less influence on operations than fellow Co-Dragon Tyrus, while making up for it with a more noticeable streak of sadism.
• The Driver: He's shown being the driver for Gus and Mike on various jobs.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He violently kicks lab equipment in frustration due to being shocked by Gale's death and his attempt to cook meth himself hints that he refused to have Walt get away with it. Too bad he implicated himself at the crime scene...
• Faux Affably Evil: More on Better Call Saul than on the parent show; he can come off as a great and unassuming guy when he's worming his way into other people's social lives to hold their lives as leverage against others.
• Hate Sink: In Breaking Bad, his relatively stoic behavior, coupled with the gruesome nature of his death almost makes him look sympathetic. All this goes out of the window when Better Call Saul retroactively establishes him as a complete and utter asshole, who takes sadistic delight in tormenting Nacho and even smiles when he kills himself.
• Idiot Ball: Despite being characterized as being an experienced professional on the level of Mike, he immediately tries to become the new cook after Gale's death (despite only learning of the formula through watching Walt cook) and managed to implicate himself at the scene of crime. This, unsurprisingly, gets him murdered by Gus in a rather bloody fashion.
• Jerkass: With a permanent scowl and a barely hidden streak of sadism, he's a very abrasive presence. He's not above tauntingly telling Nacho to call the Cousins before he dies from blood loss, and smugly comments about how nice Nacho's father is after Gus reinforces his cooperation. He also seems to enjoy watching Nacho get beaten and killed.
  Pop's a nice guy...
• Kick the Dog:
  • Joins Tyrus in taunting Nacho after they both shoot him and leave him in the desert.
  • Once Gus summons him back to his car after he's done threatening to murder Nacho's loved ones, he sarcastically comments about Nacho's father being a great person.
  • He has the gall to actually smile after Nacho's suicide. No one, not even Tyrus or Hector, does this.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: When he tries to cook a batch after Gale's death to prove to Gus he can be the cook. He arrogantly claims that he's perfectly capable of following the formula. To give him his due, while Victor probably doesn't understand why he's doing what he's doing, not even Walt can spot anything he actually does wrong (at one point, he nearly skips a step, and Walt gets visibly hopeful that he'll screw it up, but then he remembers and Walt deflates).
• Leave No Witnesses: Gus kills him because he was seen breaking into Gale's apartment.
• Limited Wardrobe: He's always seen sporting a jacket of some kind.
• Middle-Management Mook: He's occasionally in charge of spying on Nacho and giving him orders in Seasons 4 and 5. Like Tyrus, he's trusted with dirty work, such as being the intended assassin for Nacho's father or transporting Diego around town. He also mediates the brief call between Kim and Gustavo, and is the one to phone Hank to warn him of the Cousins' impending attack.
• No Full Name Given: His full name is never mentioned in either show.
• Not So Stoic: He's furious when Walt manages to get one up on him and have Jesse kill Gale.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Overlapping with Too Dumb to Live. Victor is Fring's left-hand man and has always been presented as an efficient and stoic professional. His actions after Gale's death are unprofessional, suicidal, and frankly bizarre considering his occupation and character. Though this could be chalked up to how he didn't expect Walt to have Gale killed, which took him off his guard and left him surprised.
• The Quiet One: Up until his final appearance, he's a man of few words, having less dialogue in every appearance up until Season 4.
• Sadist: After they retrieve Nacho from Mexico, he's the one who tells Mike that Gus thinks their mole has to look less "pretty" before they bring him out. Mike says he'll take care of it and curtly dismisses him. Victor leaves with an amused smirk, clearly being eager to have done the job himself. He even has the gall to smile after Nacho blows his brains out in front of everyone.
• Saved by Canon: He'll survive the events of Better Call Saul just to get his throat cut by his own boss in a meth lab several years later.
• Shame If Something Happened: He makes friends with Nacho's father, earning enough of his trust to make killing him off much easier.
• Slashed Throat: Courtesy of Gus and a boxcutter.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Killed both because he implicated himself and as a warning to Walter and Jesse that Gus is not afraid to cut any loose ends.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He thought he could cook Walter's meth by simply having observed his steps to the cook (as it turns out, apparently he was right about that, at least as far as he got). Walter mocked him and Gus thought even less of the idea...
• Smug Snake: Less competent than Mike and makes reckless tactical mistakes. He's also particularly smug when he's trying to impress Gus with his cooking.
• Smug Smiler: One of his default expressions is a sadistic Psychotic Smirk.
• The Stoic: Like many of Gus' henchmen, he remains cold and non-expressive.
• Trigger-Happy: Victor is quick to pull a gun on Nacho when he suspects he's up to something.
• The Worf Effect: His death serves as this for Walt, who is trying to plead his worth to Gus to avoid being killed; if even a loyal and important henchman like Victor is killed over an honest mistake, a willful traitor like Walt stands absolutely no chance. In an interesting twist on this trope, however, the person causing the effect actually holds less power than the person experiencing it; Walt is absolutely right in that Gus can't afford to kill him, so the only way to keep him in line long enough to find a replacement is for Gus to bluff that anyone is expendable in his organization. There is no better way to achieve this at the time than killing Victor.
• You Have Failed Me: Gus kills him for the colossal fuckup he made being seen at Gale's apartment after the latter is killed (that he also couldn't fix).

Gale Boetticher

Gale Boetticher

"Yes, I am a nerd."

^{As he appears in Better Call Saul}

Portrayed By: David Costabile

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul

"Consenting adults want what they want. At least with me, they’re getting exactly what they pay for."

Another meth cook that Gus forces Walt to replace Jesse with. Walt and Gale get along well, but in reality, Gus is using Gale to learn how Walt cooks his meth so he can dispose of Walt and Jesse and replace them with Gale, who is a lot more manageable. Years prior to this, Gale is a chemist who evaluates the purity of several meth samples provided by Gus, and who offers to cook meth for Gus himself if necessary.

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• Affably Evil: He may be a meth cook who worked for Gus, but he's an extremely nice and polite man who takes pride in his work. He also never gets involved in any violence whatsoever, despite being in the meth business.
• Alas, Poor Villain: His death at the hands of a reluctant Jesse is played for sympathy, and Walt admits that he didn't deserve to die like that.
• Ambiguously Evil: He is fully aware of what he does, but thinks that, since his product is much purer than anyone else's, it can be considered as Necessarily Evil — addicts will find their dealers anyway. At least, with his meth, they will actually have what they buy. He is also one of the nicest guys in the show.
• Ambiguously Gay: He never shows overt attraction to anyone, but he exhibits various Camp Gay mannerisms, works for a man who is himself homosexual on the basis of a scholarship named for his late lover, and bonds with and seems to have developed a vague crush on Walter over their shared enjoyment of the poetry of Walt Whitman, who was himself a famous gay icon.
• Anti-Villain: One of the least evil villains in the series. In fact, the only reason he could qualify as evil is that he's a meth cook. Hank himself mentions that it's a shame that someone as talented and intelligent as he became a meth cook.
• Back for the Dead: He returns to work for Walt after being fired, and then gets murdered.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Jesse reluctantly kills him.
• The Bus Came Back: Gale returns in Better Call Saul years after last appearing in Season 3 of Breaking Bad.
• Celebrity Paradox: When Jesse is talking to the detectives about ricin, he mentions that he might have heard about it on House. David Costabile played the scheming cousin of a Patient of the Week on that show.
• The Chew Toy: The poor man has to deal with Gus taking him down to the lab just to tell him (albeit in nicer terms) to get fucked, once he gets a job in the finished lab he's fired and replaced with Jesse, and once he's brought back he only lasts about an episode before getting killed by his replacement. It only seems fitting that he gets his own form of cosmic retribution by his copy of 'Leaves of Grass' being instrumental in Heisenberg's downfall.
• Dirty Communists: Despite being a self-proclaimed Libertarian, he's got at least three heavy books on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on his bookshelf.^note The classical definition of “libertarian” usually falls under far-left/anarchist umbrella, but in the United States, it’s usually used to refer to classical liberalism or anarcho-capitalism. Considering that he has a Ron Paul campaing sticker in his notebook, he's most likely the latter. Regardless of which he is, however, neither are especially fond of Marxism. This is not unusual, however, since people that are into politics tend to study even ideologues that they strongly disagree with.
• Do Wrong, Right: Gus just wants him to test the purity of the meth, but Gale finds them so bad he insists on doing the cooking himself.
• Establishing Character Moment: He's reintroduced in Better Call Saul singing along to Tom Lehrer's "The Elements", establishing Gale as a smart, lovable nerd. He also offers to cook better quality samples of meth for Gus in the same enthusiastic demeanor.
• Evil Genius: He's incredibly talented and smart for a meth cook. Even Hank mentions this.
• Extreme Doormat: Gale never puts his foot down. For example, when he gives an estimated time span for getting something done, he'll immediately capitulate to a demand to get it done faster. When Walt fires him from his dream job for spurious reasons, he acts more hurt than angry.
• Fatal Flaw: Gale is too submissive, the only time he said no to Gus was so someone Gale deemed better than himself become the head cook for Gale to follow. He lets Jesse in with no caution and can do nothing but weakly plead for his life.
• Foil: To Jesse. Both characters are talented meth cooks and more than qualified to serve as Walt's assistant, but while Jesse is a young delinquent who ignored Walt's advice to apply himself, Gale is an older, extremely committed, and dedicated man whose only major crime seems to be cooking an illegal drug. Jesse is a drug addict who smokes and drinks and lives on junk food, while Gale is a clean-living vegan whose only vice is coffee. Jesse wears oversized casual clothes while Gale wears shirts and slacks, dressing more like Walt despite being considerably younger than him. Jesse is at least overtly uninterested in art or culture, talks in slang and uses "bitch" practically as a punctuation point, while Gale is a poetry buff, he is articulate and polite and he never swears. The most crucial contrast however is that for all his faults Jesse is much better suited to the job of Walt's assistant. Gale's academic background makes him inclined to take the initiative, be creative in his work, and question Walt's orders. Walt prefers Jesse because he really just wants someone who doesn't ask questions and simply does what he is told.
• For Science!: Gale is more interested in having a dream lab and a good partner than the actual consequences of his actions. Addicts are going to get their meth from somewhere, so why not give them the best? He approaches coffee-making with the same incredible precision.
• Fun Personified: Reintroduced singing "The Elements" in his college's lab and was very enthusiastic while surveying the upcoming meth lab. Overall, he's very excited to get cooking for Gus' business.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Doesn't swear.
• Harmless Villain: He may be a drug producer, but he never does anything violent.
• Lovable Nerd: Incredibly nerdy and likable, with his special love of SCIENCE!, karaoke, and Walt Whitman.
  Gale: Yes. I am a nerd.
• Manchild: He's a grown adult, and his behavior is incredibly naive and childish. Basically, he's less of an adult and more of a kid with a high intellect.
• Mundane Made Awesome: His approach to making coffee.
• Nice Guy: Despite his job, Gale is one of the most goodhearted people on the show. He willingly talks Gus into giving him a demotion to the assistant when he could have had the lab to himself, purely because he honestly believes Walt is capable of making a superior product.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: "Box Cutter" reveals in a Flashback that his dedication to making the best meth possible in Gus' lab is what inspired Gus to hire Walt. Which didn't work out too well for him in the end.
• Non-Action Guy: Non-combat-proficient obviously. The only thing he can do when Jesse points a gun at him is to meekly beg for his life.
• Pretty Little Headshots: His head wound is cleaner than most of the ones on the show. Then again, we only see the entry wound below his eye.
• Punch-Clock Villain: For him, his illegal job is a just mere job and nothing else. It's nothing personal.
• Put on a Bus: He's fired by Walt and replaced by Jesse after three episodes. He does, however, come back in the finale of Season 3. Too bad that it was for the dead.
• Replacement Goldfish: It's implied, especially by his cameo in Better Call Saul, that Gustavo sees him as this to the deceased Max Arciniega, who was also a meth cook whose education Gus paid for.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Exists primarily to provide a relatively innocent victim to show how much Walt has had to compromise his morals.
• Saved by Canon: He'll survive the events of Better Call Saul just to be shot and killed in his apartment by Jesse Pinkman several years later.
• Sliding Scale of Libertarianism and Authoritarianism: He is a self-identified Libertarian and that plays into his motivations. He does not believe that using drugs should be illegal so he does not see what he does as truly criminal, and rather feels that it's better if someone with his skills and talents be allowed to manufacture meth and other drugs since the product will be of higher quality and thus, safer to use.
• Small Role, Big Impact: While he's relatively important even with the small amount of screen time, it turns out that he's been an Unwitting Instigator of Doom even in death. He affects the plot in a major way at least three times by being the factor that made Gus hire Walt in the first place, driving the plot of Season 3; his death and his notes are what inspire Hank to investigate Gus Fring in Season 4; and his gift is what finally does Walt in at the end of Season 5A.
• Squee: When brought in to express his thoughts on the half-finished superlab, Gale expresses how impressed he is and can barely contain himself.
• Sucksessor: Gale is more competent than Jesse by any definition of the word, but Walt comes to resent Gale because he answers to Gustavo and is too submissive for Walt to enjoy manipulating. This is played with in that before Jesse was assaulted by Hank, it wasn't like Walt wasn't overjoyed to be working with someone on his level.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Very naive, but was a good man who didn't possess a malicious bone in his body. Walt even admits he didn't deserve to die the way he did. He blames Gus for it.
• TV Genius: Besides his geeky hobbies, Gale is fixated on cooking the best possible meth and, in Better Call Saul, is disappointed with the poor samples he's been reviewing. With the lab still unfinished, he tries to convince Gus that he can get the rudimentary business going with a few fans, and Gus has to reaffirm that it has to be ready first.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Even prior to his death, as described in the example above, Gale unknowingly causes friction between Walt and Gus. Gale's insistence on learning Walt's recipe ends up cluing Walt in on the fact that Gus is trying to find a replacement so that he can have him killed. This motivates Walt to completely rebel against Gus and plot his death. And even in death, his copy of Leaves of Grass becomes critical evidence that leads Hank to Walt, leading to Walt's life fracturing and ultimately him dying alone.

Periphery

Chris Mara

Christopher 'Chris' Mara

"I figured I'd start with you."

Portrayed By: Christopher King

" I'm really sorry about this, Mike, but I needed the money. Those feds, they took it all, man."

One of Gus' more recurring minor henchmen.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite what he did, Mike sees his death as an unfortunate necessity. Mike includes him as one of the "good men", that Lydia had killed.
• Bald of Evil: Again, a shaved head atypical of a minion of Gus.
• The Brute: For Gus and later Lydia. He isn't as incredibly competent as Mike, but he'll do some thug work in a pinch.
• The Driver: For Gus.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Shot by Mike midway through his explanation.
• Mugging the Monster: Hired by Lydia to kill Mike along with the other nine guys from a list following Gus' demise. Needless to say, he's unsuccessful.
• Recurring Extra: Chris has four appearances in season 4, but doesn't get a name or dialogue until the season 5 pilot, which also counts as his A Death in the Limelight.
• Underestimating Badassery: He seriously thinks Mike is just going to walk through the front door after forcing Chow to call him to his house, and waits there with his gun drawn in anticipation. Mike tricks him by tying a stuffed animal to the doorbell as a decoy, finds a different way into the house, and gets the drop on him from behind. The silent exasperation his face displays upon the realization suggests that he knew it wasn't going to be as easy as he thought.
• Villains Want Mercy: Attempts to beg Mike to spare his life after killing Chow. Mike has none of it.

Dennis Markowski

Dennis Markowski

"What is that alarm? What's happening?"

Portrayed By: Mike Batayeh

"Is there a problem?"

The manager of the Lavanderia Brilliante, the laundry where Gus hides the lab.

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• Ambiguously Jewish: Dennis' surname is fairly common among Polish Jews and he speaks with a thick New York accent. This adds an extra layer of awfulness to his horrific enough death when you realize that the Neo-Nazis are effectively killing him with fire, which can cause gas inhalation, inside a chamber.
• Bald of Evil: Is bald and one of Gus' cronies.
• Dirty Coward: Somewhat justified, perhaps, but after telling Mike that he's no rat and that he's not going to roll over even absent the hazard pay (instead simply telling Mike that 'someone' will talk if they don't get their money), after Mike's death, is fully prepared to give up everything he knows to the DEA. The only reason he doesn't is that the DEA refuses to give him a favorable deal, and before negotiations can continue he's knocked off. Back in season 4, he also nervously agrees to let the cops search the laundromat when they threaten to return with a search warrant.
• He Knows Too Much: Killed because of the information he has on the Fring network.
• Kill It with Fire: In a spectacularly grisly fashion, he's burned to death by the Aryans.
• Man on Fire: He apparently did something to earn solitary confinement. Doesn’t stop the Aryan Brotherhood from still killing him. How you ask? By spraying alcohol into the cell and lighting him on fire!
• Offstage Villainy: He did something offscreen to earn him solitary confinement inside the jail. Said solitary confinement ends up biting him in the ass and leads to his death at the hands of the Neo-Nazis.
• Plea Bargain: Tries to pull one after his own lawyer is arrested and Mike is killed.

The Rival Dealers

The Rival Dealers

...

Portrayed By: Mike Seal & Antonio Leyba

Two street-level meth dealers under Gus Fring's employ. They oversee his turf in Albuquerque.

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• Asshole Victim: Their manner of death is absolutely brutal, but both of them had it coming after killing a kid.
• Bald of Evil: One of them.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Walt kills Dealer #1.
• Car Fu: How Walt kills Dealer #2 and cripples Dealer #1.
• Evil Mentor: To Tomás.
• One Degree of Separation: Their affiliation with Gus wasn't revealed until almost a full season after they used Tomas to kill Combo near the end of Season 2. The event in question marked the beginning of Walt and Jesse's relationship with Los Pollos Hermanos, as well as the ring/chain's ultimate downfall.
• No Name Given: We never find out their names.
• Small Role, Big Impact: They hardly appear more than five times and don't have a single line of dialogue in the series, but their actions paved the way for the eventual fall of Los Pollos Hermanos. Without them, Walt and Jesse would have been in Gus' good books and cooked as much as he wanted from them.
• Stupid Evil: There was really no practical reason for them to kill Tomas. Doing so broke the already fragile peace offering Gus set up between them and Jesse, leading to their murders at Walt's hands.
• Tattooed Crook: The bald one has tattoos on his arms, his neck, and the back of his head.
• The Voiceless: They never speak a single word of dialogue.
• Would Hurt a Child: They murder Tomás, possibly on Gus' orders.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Their decision to murder Tomás starts a chain of events that ultimately culminates in Gus Fring's death and the collapse of Los Pollos Hermanos.

Tomás Cantillo

Tomás Cantillo

"Bounce!"

Portrayed By: Angelo Martinez

"Yeah, what you want?"

The younger brother of Andrea, Jesse's second girlfriend. He incidentally works with Gus by working for two (trusted) neighborhood drug dealers in his employ.

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• Chekhov's Gunman: His murder of Combo later resurfaces and leads to escalating tensions with Gus, and basically the plot of the entire fourth season.
• Death of a Child: Ends up getting murdered by the drug dealers he was working for.
• Practically Different Generations: Is much younger than his adult-aged sister, and only a few years older than his nephew Brock.
• Sadistic Choice: According to Andrea, the two drug dealers handed Tomás a gun and told him to either shoot a random person or it would be him on the line.
• Small Role, Big Impact: His murder of Combo ends up causing sparking friction between Jesse and Gustavo in a way that ultimately motivates Walter to kill the latter and take over his meth empire.
• Smug Snake: For the short period of time that we see him. He obviously thinks that he's tough. But in reality, he's just a kid who's way in over his head.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The first time we see him, he still acts much like any other kid his age, and is obviously nervous while murdering Combo. When Jesse encounters him later on, however, he behaves in a much more openly hostile and confrontational manner, clearly having been desensitized by his murder of Combo. Andrea mentions how he talked about killing Combo like it was no big deal.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: At age 11, he's already involved in drug dealing and has even committed murder.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Jesse made Gustavo promise there would be no more children involved in his drug business, the two drug dealers who employed Tomás executed him.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed off-screen after his second appearance.

Nick

Nick

Portrayed By: Eric Steinig

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul

A member of Gus' security team.

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• Ascended Extra: In Better Call Saul, he's given more lines and a more active role than when he was last seen in Breaking Bad, and he's much less expendable since he'll clearly survive the events of the prequel.
• Boom, Headshot!: Gets his head splattered all over the side of a Los Pollos Hermanos truck.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Nick is one of Mike's men assigned to watch over the reckless contractor Kai to keep him out of trouble.
• Cold Sniper: In Better Call Saul, he's seen wielding a Barrett .50 cal to protect Gus' chicken farm, then an SR-25 match rifle when Mike arrives at Jimmy and Kim's apartment.
• Irony: His only scene in Breaking Bad is being one of many generic Mooks at Gus' farm, and getting sniped by Gaff while loading cargo. Season 6 of Better Call Saul instead has him behind a sniper rifle to protect the farm.
• No Body Left Behind: Mike and Jesse dispose of his corpse in hydrofluoric acid.
• Saved by Canon: He survives Better Call Saul only to be killed by Gaff during Gus' war with the cartel in the parent series.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: His murder by sniper headshot in Breaking Bad is so abrupt it's practically a jump-scare.

Dr. Barry Goodman

Dr. Barry Goodman

"It's Gustavo. He's dead."

^{As he appears in Better Call Saul} "And how may I help you today, Mr. 'Clark?'"

Portrayed By: JB Blanc

Appearances: Breaking Bad | Better Call Saul

"This man pays my salary."

A doctor on Gus' payroll. He's in charge of an emergency medical tent he had set up in case something went wrong with his plot to poison the cartel.

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• Affably Evil: He might be a cartel doctor, but he's a pleasant fellow who playfully teases Jesse about his bad habits and seems to be genuine friends with Gus.
• Back-Alley Doctor: For Fring's operations. Downplayed in that he's pretty professional and has the proper skills for handling humans. He is actually so good at passing as a legitimate doctor he can get a patient's medical history or diagnostic without the hospital questionning who he is.
• Crazy-Prepared: Knows the complete medical history of Gus, Mike, and Jesse whilst also having their blood samples. Given that he's a doctor, it's part of the job description, but still impressive considering he set up a make-shift hospital on short notice.
• Even Evil Has Standards: After infiltrating the hospital to get information about Hector's condition, he questions whether or not Hector deserves to suffer in his current state, suggesting Gus arrange for specialists from Johns Hopkins to be flown in to operate on Hector. At the same time, he also admits that his comatose state is a fitting fate for such a cruel man, which Gus objects to since he believes he should be the one to decide what should happen to Hector.
• Fate Worse than Death: In Better Call Saul, he observes Hector being bedridden and comatose to be this, as an alternative to getting him the treatment he needs to recover.
• The Medic: What he is. He patches up Gus and Mike after their assassination of the cartel.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Downplayed. He's only on the payroll of the bad guys, he's not a real bad guy himself. He also supplies cocaine for Mike to use to ensnare some of Hector's drug runners.
• One-Steve Limit: Zig-Zagged. Dr. Barry Goodman is present in the show all about Amoral Attorney Saul Goodman, but the show starts before Jimmy McGill starts going by his iconic alias. Jimmy eventually warms up to the name by Seasons 3 and 4 of Better Call Saul.
• Only in It for the Money: Operates on Gus first whilst ignoring Mike. When Jesse points this out, he casually replies that Gus is the one who pays him.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He only does what he does because he's on Gus' payroll, and while certainly unscrupulous, is not actively malicious. When he's not working for Gus, he's treating patients at his clinic and handing out lollipops to his child patients.
• Saved by Canon: He's alive in Breaking Bad, indicating that he'll survive the events of Better Call Saul just fine.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Initially, one could dismiss him as a Bit Character for Los Pollos Hermanos. However, his informing Mike of Gus' death in "Live Free or Die" is the catalyst to Mike returning to New Mexico, not to mention the reason that he was still alive after the faceoff with the cartels.
• Sole Survivor: Out of all the known characters directly involved in Gus' drug empire, he is the sole survivor with the exception of Jesse.
• Villainous BSoD: He is incredibly dejected upon learning Gus was killed.
• Villainous Friendship: With Gus, whom he warmly hugs and refers to as an 'amigo' or Gustavo, instead of 'sir' or 'Mr. Fring'.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's not seen again after Mike returns to New Mexico in a furious rage. Justified since his primary employer is dead.

Dan Wachsberger

Dan Wachsberger

"Hey."

Portrayed By: Chris Freihofer

The lawyer for Mike's 9 guys, and manager of their legacy money.

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• Amoral Attorney: He is a corrupt lawyer.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Is the first of Walt's prison victims to be murdered. Saul reveals during his arraignment he was stabbed forty-eight times.
• Decoy Leader: Pretends to take on Mike as a paralegal, but in reality does nothing but sit and listen to music while Mike does the talking.
• Dirty Coward: After his arrest, he doesn’t hesitate to rat out his former clients and even tricks Mike into revealing his location to the DEA.
• Dramatic Irony: As he's being shanked, he's talking to his own lawyer on the phone.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As he's being shanked, he tells his lawyer to tell his kids he loves them.
• Foil: To Saul. While both are Amoral Attorneys, Dan is more straight-laced, dresses more soberly and cultivates a veneer of respectability. Unfortunately, he is a lot less savvy and blows Mike's cover with one careless but fatal error. He also lacks Saul's loyalty - he agrees to rat out his clients once he is arrested while betraying a client is a line Saul always refused to cross, even when offered a bribe or threatened with violence.
• Nice to the Waiter: Is very nice to the receptionist at the safety deposit box location.
• Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction upon seeing Gomez and two other DEA agents enter the vault.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: He agrees to rat out Mike and the other nine of Gus' former security team members for a lighter sentence, but because he chose to rat everyone out, Walt arranges for him and the nine guys to be killed in prison before they can testify, rendering his decision worse than pointless.

Duane Chow

Duane Chow

"She says yes."

Portrayed By: James Ning

"Thank God you're here! They keep me prisoner!"

A Chinese businessman who owns a chemical manufacturing company that supplies Gus' operation. He's first rescued by Mike while being held hostage by the Juarez Cartel. Later on, after Gus' death, he comes under investigation by the DEA.

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• Affably Evil: He supplies methylamine to Gus, but from what little we see of him, he doesn't seem to be that unpleasant of a guy. Mike also refers to him as a "good man".
• Back for the Dead: His first appearance is in the Season 3 episode "Full Measures". His second and last appearance is the Season 5 episode "Madrigal", where he is shot and killed offscreen.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Chris disposed of him.
• Butt-Monkey: Has a tiny handful of appearances. In every single one of them either something terrible happens to him or he's in the middle of dealing with major problems.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Owns the Golden Moth Chemical company, which supplies Gus with his methylamine.
• Face Death with Dignity: He stares down Chris calmly and takes One Last Smoke before being killed.
• Impaled Palm: Shot in the hand by Mike for not warning Gus that he was being held captive by the cartel.
• Killed Offscreen: He is last shown alive having a gun aimed at his head. When it cuts to later, it is revealed that Chris killed him earlier while waiting for Mike.
• One Last Smoke: He takes a last smoke before getting shot in the head.

Maximino Arciniega

Maximino "Max" Arciniega

"<Please, he's my partner. I need him! I swear to God!>"

Portrayed By: James Martinez

"<I know Gustavo like a brother. He's an honorable man. The most loyal man I have ever known.>"

Maximino "Max" Arciniega was a close associate of Gus Fring and co-founder of the Los Pollos Hermanos franchise. He held advanced degrees in biochemistry and chemical engineering. Max's education was financed by Gus after Gus rescued him from the slums of Santiago.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He dies while begging for Gus' life.
• Ambiguously Gay: Stated to be a valid interpretation of Max and Gus' relationship. Better Call Saul has more strongly implied that he and Gus were lovers, though has stopped short of actually confirming it thus far. Peter Gould finally admitted after Fun And Games that Gus and Max's bond was a romantic one.
• Boom, Headshot!: Courtesy of Hector.
• Chekhov's Gunman: His name gets dropped earlier in the same episode in which he appears.
• Clandestine Chemist: He has a degree in chemical engineering and is a meth producer, while officially working as a chef.
• The Lost Lenore: His death drives Gus' vendetta against the Cartel and the Salamanca family. Gus also dedicated a fountain to his memory.
• Posthumous Character: Max's death happened long before the events of the main story. It is the driving force behind basically all of Gus' actions.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Avenging his death is the primary motivation behind Gus' character.
• The Smart Guy: He knows the science, while Gus knows the business.
• Tuckerization: Shares a name with the actor who played Krazy 8 back in the first season.

Los Pollos Security Team

Los Pollos Security Team

"Corporate security" for Los Pollos Hermanos, these guys were Mike's trusted employees who were promised hazard pay should Gus be killed. Despite Mike's assurances that they were loyal, Lydia and eventually Walt wanted to have them all killed before they said anything to the DEA about the meth operations.

The security team consisted of Jack McGann, Andrew Holt, Anthony Perez, Isaac Conley, William Moniz, Raymond Martinez, and Harris Boivin. All seven of them were killed in jail by the Aryan Brotherhood along with their lawyer Dan Wachsberger, laundry manager Dennis Markowski, and Madrigal foreman Ron Forenall.

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• Asshole Victim: Sure, their murders were horrific and grisly, and continued to solidify Walt as completely ruthless, but they were still thugs, at least two of whom would've murdered Walt and his entire family before they had gotten caught. Of course, considering how little we see of them, they may well have been more sympathetic if we'd gotten to know them better.
• Bald of Evil: McGann and Moniz.
• Beard of Evil: McGann and Perez.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Holt, Boivin, and Martinez all appear for a single scene apiece in season 4.
• He Knows Too Much: The reason why Lydia and later Walt want them killed.
• Scary Black Man: Presumably both McGann and Moniz, even if we didn't get to see much of them outside jail.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: How the Aryans dispose of them seems awfully over the top, much like everything else the Aryans do. Although as mentioned in Asshole Victim, they had it coming by nearly murdering Walt's wife and kids.
• Undying Loyalty: These are Mike's guys, and "they are solid." At least some of them try and get a good plea bargain the moment the money for their families stops coming in. However, this is only after Mike gets killed, whom they had maintained their loyalty towards.

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